Using Digital Marketing to Attract Youth Sports Sponsorship

Digital Marketing Tips to Build Your Audience & Entice Youth Sports & Fitness Sponsorships

In a technology age, people flock to the internet to search for answers, locate nearby businesses, socialize with friends, and shop online. It’s crucial for your youth sports business to remain current in your digital strategy, especially if you want to attract local or corporate sponsors.

Awhile back we wrote an article on 5 strategies on securing a youth sports sponsorship. This article, however, focuses on your digital presence. Your online marketing can broaden opportunities and expand your reach so your sports & fitness business is put in front of your desired audience be it new clients, or corporate supporters. The key is maintaining an active and steady presence that highlights the sports training or team and generates engagement from your audience. Then, as you create campaigns that are geared toward gaining youth sports sponsorship, they’ll be more apt to respond and participate because they know you have a consistent and active audience!

You can begin leveraging digital marketing today to better position your youth sports brand for sports sponsorships. Try these three methods to get started.

Build an Email List

Growing a subscriber list is one of the most important components to a working online marketing strategy.

Whether you’re collecting contacts from parents, vendors or previous sponsors, growing your email list is crucial to building ongoing relationships and keeping clients in the know. Even if your email marketing merely consists of sending a monthly newsletter, this regular communication keeps your brand “top of mind” and promotes retention. There are two types of email to consider; bulk email and transactional email. Bulk email is essentially email marketing. You create an email campaign and send it to all your subscribers at once. Transactional email, on the other hand, is where the recipient triggers the email themselves by opening an account, placing an order or asking for a new password etc. In terms of transactional email tools, there’s an excellent range of tools on the market. Two of the best are Mailgun and SendGrid, which you can see compared at Mailgun vs Sendgrid.

How to use email to attract youth sports sponsorship:

• Optimize your website for leads. Most people who visit your site may never return. Use web forms and popups to create multiple opportunities to get your visitor’s contact information so you can follow-up.
• Newsletters are perfect content pieces to foster relationships and share what’s going on with your business, celebrate players, thank sponsors, and keep people connected to you.
• Plug prospective sponsors into your email system. Businesses or brands that you may have spoken to in the past are ideal for following up with for future engagement. Your email marketing can solidify relationships and move them towards a decision, especially when they see you’re successfully communicating with your database. After all, that’s the audience they could potentially reach by being your sponsor.
• Be consistent in your email schedule to maintain engagement

Grow Your Website Content by Blogging

Did you know that 71% of business bloggers say their blog increased visibility in their industries? Blogging is a great method of boosting your search engine ranking and positioning your youth sports brand as a leader in the industry. It gives you a platform to share valuable tips for parents, athletes, and even other coaches. This will give your business valuable content to share through email and social media accounts, bringing more exposure to your youth sports business. You might find that using social media marketing tools – such as this Instagram bot by Kenji – could help you with your engagement and exposure you need for your brand.

How to use blogging to attract youth sports sponsorship:

• Think about those frequent questions that you’re always answering. What are some common problems that you experience in the industry? These are great blog topics to start with to get the ball rolling.
• But how does this help with youth sports sponsorship? First, a blog shows that you’re serious about your mission. Directing people to your blog is different than your website because it goes a bit deeper than just selling, hitting on a more personal, educational level. It’s fresh, dynamic, and draws people into what you’re doing.
• As mentioned, blogs give you great content to share with your subscriber list. If you have prospective sponsors, they’ll constantly be reminded about your team through your emails and blog posts. When it’s time for you to ask for s sports sponsorship, you’ll get more hand raises because of the value you’ve shared through your blog content.
• Finally, you can create a blog post centered on getting sponsors for your sports organization. Highlight the benefits of becoming a sponsor, how do sponsors help the team, and how will you promote their brand with your blog and newsletter.

Leverage Social Media – Especially Instagram

Social media rocks at spreading the word and building awareness around your brand. There’s so much you can do to create engagement. From hosting contests to social groups, broadcasting live-streaming videos, and sharing eye-catching images. The more buzz…the better! This is more often than not why you’ll find many businesses of any type looking to create more buzz by finding professional marketing teams, like this social media marketing Jacksonville FL agency for instance, to effectively target and market through various social media channels. Businesses are finding that outsourcing their marketing efforts creates greater brand engagement further down the line.

Instagram is the place to be for sports businesses. In fact, over 165 million Instagram users are sports fans, an ideal platform for your youth training to increase your presence. The focus is building a strong follower base where you’re regularly gaining new audience members and engaging people with your content. This type of audience is invaluable to potential sponsors. You may want to think about facebook advertising as well as they’re a great social media platform, you can create your own page or share photos to promote!

Here are a few tips to boost your Instagram presence and catch the attention of potential sponsors:

• Use hashtags – These are absolutely necessary to getting fresh views on your content. It’s how users are able to find your posts and follow your page. Use popular niche-related hashtags every time you post, to increase exposure.
• Encourage parents to use your brand hashtag when sharing images of their young athletes.
• Use tools like Buffer to help you plan and schedule content to remain active on your page.
• Create a campaign calling for sponsorships. Outline the advantages in the caption and encourage followers to repost it to their page for support.

Digital marketing is your best friend in a technology-driven era. Implementing these tactics will build a solid foundation to your online marketing, helping attract future sponsors and building a strong presence. Finally, don’t forget to ask! Use the free sponsorship letter template below to help sell prospects on your vision.

Free Sponsorship Letter Template