Are you an Amazon customer? I’ll bet you are. I’ll also wager that on at least one occasion you’ve bought something from them that you didn’t really want or didn’t know that you wanted. I’ll also be so bold as to guess that, looking back – far from feeling like you’d been duped – you were grateful to Amazon for saving you time.
That’s the power of predictive analytics and retailers like Amazon are driving our expectations of what a customer experience should be: tailored offerings, saving us time and money. Analytics are becoming more and more common in the “real world” and it’s something which the sporting world needs to read up on, and quickly.
Static brand messaging (such as perimeter boards) is becoming increasingly incongruous with a wider world that wants to engage with everything. Branding is a percentages game and in 2012 it is a wholly inefficient way to reach an ever-more discerning and sophisticated audience. Even moreso, it totally fails to take into account the multiple customer segments within that audience, used to more tailored brand experiences.
Sports rightsholders, by and large are equally complicit. In my experience, they don’t tend to understand that marketing is an investment in the future, rather than a cost in the present and consequently have failed to offer sponsors a more bespoke menu of options and a more collaborative approach to marketing. A one-size-fits-all sales strategy is easy and convenient, but it can’t go on forever.
Whilst the FA Premier League – for the moment – looks bulletproof, others are not so lucky. The more that broadcasters spend on top-flight football, the less there is for everyone else, which means those at risk ought to be searching for alternative value drivers, both to push sales of their own products and to provide an alternative platform to sponsors and partners.
To me, it’s obvious what that driver is. Whereas consumption of a “passion point” through media is an increasingly cold and impersonal experience, the use of predictive analytics should enable sports righstholders to engage fully with their audience and through a tailored proposition – learning all the time about their customers – and all the time, improving their experience. The Single Customer View is the holy grail and it’s the basis for Amazon’s business model. Getting it right creates an ongoing virtuous circle.
Having a fully-engaged and happy customer base, about whom the rightsholder knows everything is a highly-valuable commercial proposition that sponsors – who might not be interested in media values – should be delighted to buy into. Those who have the foresight to start investing in their customers will improve the elasticity of their business in the longer term and will be able to build a more robust business in the long-term, less exposed to the vagaries of on-field success and less reliant on media distribution as a selling point.
We’re seeing great advances in segmented and personalised marketing. As my previous post about Red Bull Stratos argues, we’re going to see more brands creating their own platforms. Data is increasingly important in identifying talent – Moneyball style – on the pitch. It’s high time its importance was recognised in sports marketing.
