Sports + Analytics = Higher Returns

Organized sports have moved from being a form of entertainment to becoming a useful marketing tool.  If used well, a sporting event or team can boost the popularity of a product, as well as a company’s revenue.  But you might be asking,”How can analytics mix in this equation?”  Simple, by using the team’s health, analytics will show you the areas where you need to improve your marketing strategies to drive traffic to your site and ultimately convert your visitors into clients.

Take the Tampa Bay Rays or the San Diego Chargers for example.  Both teams have either disappointed or were believed to make it far because of their past or current experiences, but the Rays made it as far as the World Series and the Chargers are putting every sport analyst to shame by making it to the Divisional Series.  What this means to your business is that behind these successes are fans that support the team, and you can use those emotions to drive more traffic to your site. 

One strategy is to promote your product/service on sites that cater to a team’s fan base.  As the season progress, not only monitor the team’s health but also your traffic.  My experience with clients that use this strategy is that their products trend in conjunction with the team’s health.  Look at your referring traffic to see what domains bring the most visitors to your site and focus your marketing strategies on those domains that are popular, while improving your ad placement or using other tactics to drive visitor traffic from those referring sites that bring the least traffic.

Something else to keep in mind is that the use of a team to promote a product /service needs to be done regardless of the team’s health to maintain support from the fans, while avoiding the “bandwagon effect.”  The bandwagon effect is a behavior where people adopt something that others do without consideration, which is closely related to opportunism.  This is clearly seen in sports.  As a team succeeds, it creates a greater fan base.  In order to find success in a team’s downfall is to use the hope of a better season, to drive the core fan base to your product/service.  This not only evokes loyalty from that group of fans, but the word of mouth will spread the popularity of the product/service as the team’s popularity increase.

So, what do think and who do you think will make it big in 2009 (besides the Chargers of course)?  Happy analytics!