Helping brands to partner with athletes in their influencer marketing and sponsorship marketing campaigns

Imagine a world where global merchandising behemoth Nike ceases to exist. Can’t do it, can you?

Well, that’s good news for Cristiano Ronaldo, as he recently became the third athlete to sign a “lifetime” deal with the Swoosh - meaning as long as both he and Nike are around, he’s getting paid. Already the highest grossing athlete in the world, Ronaldo now joins Michael Jordan and LeBron James as Nike’s only lifetime endorsers.

Ronaldo: One is made of wax. The other is made of money.

While these athletes may only come around once in a lifetime (pardon the cliché), our tools can help you start finding athletes that already align with your brand!

Powered by IBM Watson, every athlete profile includes their most used keywords and the most important topics they mention on social media. Our Social Insights tool also allows you to manually search for key words or phrases used by any of our 2,000+ athletes. If your brand sells vodka and you want to sponsor an athlete who drinks vodka, a simple search will show you all athletes who have mentioned the word "vodka" in a social media post before!

If you're looking for an athlete influencer who is already aligned with your company's core values, speak to an OpenSponsorship rep today or send us an email at info@opensponsorship.com.

Examples:

Want to find players who discuss their virtues? Search terms like "trust", "faith", and "charity" to find athletes like Amir Khan.

Looking for father figures? Bet you didn't expect UFC fighter Matt Brown to frequently hashtag #dadlife.

Interested in playing off the #MannequinChallenge craze? 54 of our athletes have talked about it on social media, including Chad Johnson.

This post is originally written by Jenn Mamajek

http://www.SportsLinkMarketing.com

In sponsorship of athletes, a primary key of communication is social media. Brands are willing to pay top dollars to sign athletes with the expectation of a large return on their investments. Because it is so easy to share ideas on social media, this plays such a large part of each and everyones daily lives. It is important now more than ever to maximize an athletes digital platform in sponsorship and endorsement strategies.

Athletes have some of the most influential profiles and accounts on social media.  Due to the fact that athletes have such large social reaches, by including their digital presence in a brand’s sponsorship strategy, you are more likely to increase brand awareness and generate a greater return on investment.

For example, LeBron James a very popular NBA star currently has 33.3M followers on Twitter and 23M followers on Facebook.  Although all of his followers are not Cleveland Cavalier fans, both the Cavaliers organization as well as Lebron’s sponsors such as NIKE unquestionably benefit from his online presence. NIKE and other LeBron James sponsors prosper each time that he associates himself with their brand in a social media post.

Another advantage of using athletes digital platform to promote products through social channels is an increased return on investment. Companies are now seeing these results and are turning to this avenue for maximizing brand exposure. Of course, global brands such as NIKE will certainly continue to use traditional media in addition to their online and digital strategies.

 As more and more digital platforms emerge, so do analytical platforms that help with tracking the success of digital campaigns.  This means it is much easier to measure the success of a social media campaign compared to traditional print ads or television.  Brands are now able to collect valuable data about their online campaigns.  This data includes being able to monitor new and returning visitors, click through rates, page views, conversion rates and time spent on particular pages. By monitoring a campaign’s analytical data, you are able to know what type of content that your audience prefers.

In conclusion, brands should keep in mind the statistics above and include their athlete’s digital platforms to help increase their overall endorsement exposure. Athletes endorsing through social media can help generate a larger reach, maximize brand awareness, and generate an improved return on investment.  Because most fans are influenced by their favorite athlete, one digital mention of a brands product can significantly increase engagement which leads to more product sales and loyal consumers.