How sponsorship creates a push/pull marketing dynamic

How sponsorship creates a push/pull marketing dynamic

Upon opening the many newspapers London provides, you will undoubtedly find at least one article describing how the loss of sponsorship funding is endangering a sports team.

This has created an impression that the sponsorship industry has been dealt a severe blow by the credit crunch. However, while many of these multi-million pound sponsorship deals are drying up, there is a surging interest in B2B sponsorship.

The reason for the surge in sponsorship deals is partly due to a marketing shift in the industry – the push/pull dynamic.

Traditional push media such as TV, billboards, radio, newspapers and magazines offer one-way communication between the brand and the consumer. In the past these have proven effective alone. However, at a time when people are constantly marketed to through more and more channels, traditional push marketing is increasingly falling onto deaf ears.

It is now becoming crucial to engage your audience. Pull marketing is interactive, two-way communication between the brand and the consumer. This is more effective than ever thanks to internet marketing, social media, RSS, blogs, forums and so on.

Of course, combining push and pull marketing is most effective of all. And sponsorship can deliver this.

Aligning your brand with something about which the target audience feels passionate can create goodwill. It is an age-old fact that people tend to favour others who like the same things as they do; this dynamic is no less true when it comes to forming a relationship between brand and audience.  Through sponsorship the target audience can be primed to be receptive to the brand.

In addition, sponsorship can create pull marketing through tangible “touchpoints” for the consumer to interact with your brand. The push marketing creates the awareness and the pull marketing gets the consumer involved.

Social networking sites like Twitter and LinkedIn allow you to engage with each of your consumers on a platform that they are comfortable with. Digital marketing platforms work exceptionally well within a sponsorship programme as your customers are already primed to engage with your brand.

Although sponsorship is not the only way to facilitate this push/pull dynamic, it is certainly one of the easiest which is why we are seeing a surge in these partnerships. If you are relying too much on push media and not achieving the results you are after, it may be time to consider sponsorship as a way to help incorporate this push/pull dynamic with your brand.

Jackie Fast is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and managing director of Slingshot, a specialist sponsorship agency.

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