Strong partnership sales teams are always exploring new revenue streams through the creation of new inventory to drive additional value for brand partners.
When on-site sponsorship activations with live audiences and hospitality are no longer within reach, there is a heightened need to diversify sponsorship offerings and provide a fresh array of physical and digital assets to preserve sponsorship deals with brand partners.
By effectively tracking the potential value of new sponsor inventory, rights holders can:
- Demonstrate the potential value that a new placement will drive for a partner in the form of a make good or added value campaign. When considering new sponsorship assets to offer to brand partners, it is important that rights holders can show sponsors ahead of time how much exposure and media value an asset will deliver.
- Sell with credible data and fair pricing that helps brands justify their investments. Especially when sponsorship spending is down, valuing assets before selling them allows potential sponsors to understand the amount of return and exposure that their investment could provide.
What to consider when identifying new sponsor assets
The dynamic described means rights holders must identify creative ways to create visible and impactful assets which are flexible and scalable to attract brands to partner with them. In many cases today, rights holders have increased their focus on new digital and social engagement campaigns in order to do so.
But how do successful partnerships sales teams value these new assets?
How to value a sponsorship asset
Rights holders that come prepared with predictive data to show the value they can deliver as a sponsorship partner will win share of wallet over rights holders that sell with subjective predictions and pricing without proof.
This is where White Space Analysis comes into play. White Space Analysis involves the tracking of unbranded sponsorship space and social media content in order to understand the potential value of new branding opportunities based on media value. This approach can help determine what a partnership on a new asset or completely new opportunity should realistically be worth, which helps the partner contextualize the value they will receive from the asset.
The 5-Steps to conducting a white space analysis:
- Form a hypothesis and think outside of the box to identify new assets or brand activations based on your overarching business objectives (i.e. make-goods, drawing in new sponsors, driving engagement, etc). This stage is about being creative and taking on a “what if” mindset.
- Set goals for what your ideal outcome is. This may vary on whether you are trying to fulfill a number of sponsor-placements or trying to achieve a certain amount of exposure or sponsor value for a particular new asset, such as a jersey patch or virtual placement.
- Identify practical locations which make sense to track. Some of these may be pre-existing areas within a stadium that are currently brand-free. However rights holders shouldn’t be afraid to also consider creating completely new assets.
- Run analysis taking into consideration all opportunities to monetise the locations across both television broadcasts and social media. It is important to choose a smart sample of social media accounts and media channels to track and for a large enough time frame to run an accurate analysis. Because white space analysis is often done on a small sample of games or matches, extrapolating and projecting sponsor value for your future TV schedule is critical.
- Implement, track and utilise the data to ensure you have the right white space mix. Use this data in discussions with the market to find your ideal partner for these new assets.
- Continually optimise. This is where a real-time dashboard will help you monitor the success and make tweaks along the way to ensure initial goals are being met. This should be continued into the future to ensure long term success.
The key to strong White Space Analysis is to analyse a comparable unit of measurement across all platforms to ensure consistency in data. We recommend looking at sponsor media value.
Going into a granular level of analysis with the ability to make changes at speed is also important, as this allows rightsholders to constantly analyse and optimise for partners.
Actionable data is important for all types of clients, and a real time dashboard presents this in an easy to understand manner.
Summary
For rights holders and sporting organisations, White Space Analysis should be used to add quantifiable data to new ideas. The fan-less environment has accelerated the need to be creative with new sponsorship offers and find ways to present brands with new sources of value. Rather than trying to sell a concept, White Space Analysis can help deliver data on which real-time and justifiable decisions can be made.
This type of analysis is often done in partnership with a sponsorship analytics partner like Relo Metrics. By working with Relo, rightsholders are able to track exposure of unbranded physical or digital area(s) across social media and broadcast television in order to understand the value it could deliver to a potential partner if branded.
To get in touch with us about White Space Analysis, request a demo.
Interested in learning more about white space analysis? Check out the webinar ‘Unlocking New Sponsorship Opportunities With White Space Analysis’.
Written by Harshad Kale
