“Sports Marketing: A Strategic Perspective”

Just like any other marketer, the sport marketer is faced with a challenge of presenting the sport products to the customer with the best strategy so as to maximize on sales and a brand loyalty. In the traditional model, the marketer is more concerned with presenting the product in the right way, at the right or best place, at the best price and takes care of what product to present to what market. Therefore, the marketer is greatly concerned about the mode of combining product with positioning, pricing, promotion, and Place to achieve his objective. By coming up with an effectual marketing strategy, the marketing manager is able to carefully bring together all the 5Ps into a selection of activities that budge a range of customers up the ladder. And this is what any marketer wants to see: a satisfied customer.

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Combining the 5 Ps

The sports marketer, in regard to the product, must be aware that be it a service or a product that he is endeavoring to sell, he must present the commodity in a way that attracts the targeted customer. This means that of great importance is the product appearance, its function, packaging, service and warranty among other aspects. The marketer must also be aware the different customer needs in relation to the product. This is because two customers may be consuming the same product while in the real sense they are actually consuming different products based on the benefits they derive from the consumption (Shank 2001). The marketing manager must understand the life cycle of his product so that strategies like coming up with new products that are meant to be a response to the market needs are accomplished in a satisfactory manner. And when thinking about the product, the marketer must present a product with distinct features to fit in a particular class of sports products. For instance, among the sports products, the particular product might be in the class of calisthenics or just sports. Knowing how the consumers use the product can help the marketing manager to capitalize more on the product features that can make the product stand out and attract customer loyalty. The sales manager will also count it as an achievement if the sales staff members are thoroughly knowledgeable regarding the product they are presenting for sale; a feat that will bring confidence in them. Knowledge and confidence are inseparable here.

Another item in the mix is the place. It can also be described as the strategy that ensures distribution of the sports products to the marketplace. In regard to this strategy, the marketing manager or sales manger must identify the best channels of distribution that can be used to get the product to the prospect market or target customers. In this area, therefore, the marketing manager must choose wisely the channel members, and he must not forget to look at areas like market coverage, logistics as well as the levels of service. Wrong decisions in this marketing mix item might cause delays among other inconvenience that may work well against the objective of the marketer. For instance if the channel of distribution is too long while the market is not as vast, this might also cause additional costs in addition to delaying delivery to the final consumer.

Pricing still remains a challenging task in the sports market. The marketing manager must however ensure that while making the pricing decisions, he takes into account the profit margin of business and the pricing response other competitors are likely to elicit. Mullin, Hardy, Sutton and Stern (2007: 47) advice that the marketing manager should be wary of pricing blunders or gaffes  that may have immense impact on the ability of the sales staff to make any sales of the product. Price plays a critical role in the marketing mix of the sports marketer in that prices can be readily altered, the price is extremely visible and any changes effected on it can be communicated with ease hence impacting on the consumer perceptions. And where the market is characterized by an elastic demand, the marketing manager may use price as a very effective tool. Nevertheless, the marketing manager must be aware that price is ever close to the consumer’s mind and therefore any tinkering with it may be very harmful (Shank 2001).

Promotion is one area that the modern marketer has to consider and is very essential in providing a chance to dwell on the salient features of the product. In this area, decisions made include those with respect to communicating and selling to prospective consumers. Given that these costs can be large in as compared to the product price, the marketing manger must carry out a break-even analysis whenever he is faced with the task of making promotion decisions. Thus, one important thing for the sports marketer in relation to the promotion decisions is that it is helpful for him to establish the value of a customer to facilitate determination of whether more customers are worth the cost of obtaining them. Promotion must be made part of marketing strategy by first establishing the wants and needs of the customers so that when carrying out promotional events like advertising, media types, special events and public relations the main aim is actually purposing to satisfy an already identified want or need of the consumer (Shank 2001). In the modern business environment companies and business entities spend huge amounts of money on advertising and public relations as these have become very sensitive items and well recognized. Given the huge costs, the marketer must establish whether he has a long-term or short-term objective. These huge expenses mostly benefit businesses that have long-term goals.

Lastly, the marketer has the people decisions to make. These decisions that relate to customer service are pertinent to the success of the business. In relation to this, the marketing manager must strive to ensure that the sales personnel appear to customers in a presentable fashion. The attitude of the sales personnel as people who come in direct contact with the customer is very important since the first impression is that the customer will feel unwelcome in case faces are gloomy though there are customers who may identify with or like “that rude” atmosphere (Shank 2001).

In conclusion, the sports marketer must consider every part of the marketing mix and put the satisfaction of the target customer on top of everything else and then clearly define the strategic vision and objectives of the marketing mix. The marketer must however develop alternative tactics. This will facilitate achievement of the laid down objectives.

Reference:

Shank, M., D. (2001). “Sports Marketing: A Strategic Perspective” 2^nd Edition, Prentice Hall

Bibliography

Mullin, B., J., Hardy, S., Sutton, W., A., Stern D., J. (2007). “Sport marketing” 3^rd Edition: Human Kinetics Publishing. – pp 17, 26, 45-7, 88-97, 104

Parkhouse, B., L. (2001). “The management of sport: its foundation and application” 3^rd Edition McGraw-Hill,

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