Sports Marketing 2.0 | Pat Coyle

I got a free copy of a Jupiter Research report: “Engagement, Defining and Encouraging User Engagement,” and found a few interesting points.

Here’s a quick excerpt: A new set of consumer behaviors—loosely defined as “engagement”—have arisen online as a result of the increase in popularity of social media. Engagement within social media can occur when online users interact with games, social networking sites, blogs, video, and other rich online platforms. For marketers, such high levels of interactivity and communication present new opportunities to create ongoing dialogues with users that create more personal brand experiences.
At our Sports Marketing 2.0 Summits, we dedicate an entire 1-hour panel to the topic of engagement. Our next Summits are coming up on September 10 in Los Angeles and October 16 in NYC. Visit our Sports 2.0 community site for more details.

Engagement is very tough to measure

Indeed, engagement has become a buzzword on online marketing, but there’s a big problem, it’s tough to prove that an engaged Website visitor as more likely to buy advertised products.

Sports sites could hold a key to engaging older audiences

We have noticed that the typical user of our team Website is 25 to 44 years old, and the heaviest users of our online community tend to be over 50. This might not seem surprising given that the average NFL fan is 55 years-old, but it does fly in the fac of the general stats presented by Jupiter.

The Jupiter report points out that social media is still dominated by younger people: Younger users (ages 18 to 34) are nearly seven times more likely to have created a profile page on a social network than are older users (ages 45 to 55+.)

To me this shows that the content of the site determines engagement more than the age of the visitor. New “niche” communities are sprouting up every day. MySpace and Facebook are HUGE, but over time we’ll likely see the average age of online communities get older as the mature adults find things worth doing online. In the meantime, sports sites are reaching people with MONEY. And these same people are already doing serious business online.

The Jupiter report also indicates some areas where more “mature” adults are engaging online:
User engagement is not limited to social media, however. Other forms of user engagement
have existed online for years, and in many cases, older adults participate more heavily in these activities than do younger users. Traditional forms of engagement include product research (such as building a car design or cruise itinerary,) customer engagement (such as paying bills,) and participation in sweepstakes. While 43 percent of online users ages 18 to 24 conduct product research, 59 percent of users ages 35 to 44 and 53 percent of users age 45+ do so. Sweepstakes participation is also high for most adults, peaking with adults ages 35 to 44, at 59 percent.

This last point, participating in sweepstakes, is a tactic we often use to engage Colts fans online. The challenge, of course, is to attract sweeps players who might also engage beyond the sweeps. Sponsors don’t really want to attract “game players”.