Sponsorships are crucial to sports and entertainment. To sell them, teams and promoters must generate compelling reasons that resonate with sponsors. Fan data can be quite compelling, especially as it relates to demographic information. So it stands to reason that fan data integration is an important part of the sponsorship sales process.
Put another way, demographic information is crucial to creating compelling sponsorship proposals. If teams and promoters hope to seal the deal, they need to present information clearly demonstrating that the sponsor’s investment will pay off.
Where does that information come from? How is it gathered, compiled, and presented as actionable insights? It all starts with a sports data intelligence platform like the one KORE develops.
Why Demographic Information Matters
KORE Software encourages teams and promoters to learn more about their sports data intelligence platform. In the meantime, they offer five reasons explaining why demographic information is so crucial to the sponsorship sales process:
- Audience Identification – Demographic information helps to identify a sponsor’s target audience. It also helps sponsors understand if the targeted fans align with their customer bases.
- Package Customization – Demographic information lends itself well to creating customized packages that resonate with both sponsor and target audience.
- Demonstrating Value – Presenting clear and concise demographic data demonstrates value to sponsors. It helps them to see their potential return on investment.
- Decision Making – The right information supports data-driven decision making. Demographic data is just one aspect, but a particularly important one.
- Audience Segmentation – Not every fan attending an event is part of a sponsor’s target audience. With the use of demographic information, fans can be segmented and then prioritized for messaging.
As a concept, fan data integration is really about showing sponsors that they can reach their target audience through the assets being offered. When sponsors can make the connection between assets, fans, and the value of connecting both, proposals become a lot more attractive.
Key Demographic Information
Understanding why demographic information matters leads to an obvious question: what types of demographic information should teams and promoters be gathering? Again, KORE has some suggestions:
- Fan age ranges.
- Gender distribution.
- Education and income levels.
- Fan occupations and industries.
- Geographic locations.
- Fan interests and preferences.
- Purchasing habits and behaviors.
It is not enough to settle for just age and gender. To see value, sponsors need to know what makes fans tick. They need to know that a certain percentage of the fans expected to attend an event are a good match in terms of income, education, and occupation. The list goes on and on. In the end, what matters is that an event and its fans are a good fit for a sponsor’s goals.
Combining Demographics With Psychographics
In recent years, we have begun to see a new trend of combining demographics with psychographics. The combination represents the next level of fan data integration into the sponsorship sales process.
Where demographics deal with things like age, income, and education, psychographics are more about fan behaviors. It accounts for things like previous attendance, attendance motivation, fan interests and hobbies, and fan opinions on relevant topics.
Fan data integration strategies that include both demographics and psychographics paint a very compelling picture for sponsors. By gathering, analyzing, and presenting the right data, sales teams are better prepared to guide prospects through the sponsorship sales process and on to closing.
It’s all about data. And where sponsors are concerned, demographic data is crucially important. If teams can throw in psychographic data as well, that’s a bonus. The better the data, the more likely sponsors are to get on board.
