If you look at the majority of the top brands in the world, they all have one thing in common: Athlete Endorsements. When used effectively, athlete endorsements will boost a company’s overall brand, identity and increase their public image.
It is not be happenstance that companies like Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, Coca Cola, and Puma, powerhouses in today’s marketing world, spend hundreds of millions of dollars signing some of the most influential athletes in the world to endorsement deals.
Below we dive into 5 reasons why endorsements are so powerful for businesses.
As Malcolm Lemmons says,
BIG Brands = big money
Here are 5 key reasons why endorsement athletes are so important for your brand
1. their audience becomes your audience.
Professional athletes are celebrities. That means they have an audience who watch what they do, listen to what they say, and who want what they have. Having an athlete that has social media channels of millions of people leverages an already established target audience and in turn benefits your brand. If your company selects the RIGHT athlete for your brand in aligning your vision and values with those of the athlete, the targeting guesswork is eliminated and your endorsed athlete’s audience becomes your audience.
Take a look at Lebron James for example:
He has 62.9 million followers on Instagram.
His following is primarily basketball fans. Therefore, anytime Lebron James makes a post about one of his latest Nike or other endorsed products, 62.9 million people, likely already interested in Nike’s brand, will have direct exposure to that product.
2. athletes build trust for your brand.
People trust what celebrities say and do. Athletes have a natural pedestal. One of the most common reasons a consumer purchases an item is because of a recommendation from someone that they already trust.
There is the pre-conceived notion that since celebrities have large bank accounts they will only purchase, use and support products or services of high quality. If it is good enough for a celebrity, it is good enough for the average consumer!
3. direct increase in sales.
As quoted from the small business chronicle, celebrity endorsements and branding can significantly increase sales. Signing a celebrity endorsement can cause the value of stocks to rise and increase sales by about 4 percent, according to Social Media Week. Over the last few years, social media has been a major factor in driving product sales. This is in large part due to social media granting users access to curated glimpses into the daily lives of celebrities.
Nike is a great example of using celebrity endorsements to boost sales. The 1984 Nike Air Jordan campaign, in conjunction with Michael Jordan, was one of the most successful celebrity endorsements in history. 25 years later in 2009, the Nike Jordan brand dominated 75 percent of basketball shoe sales and 10.8 percent of overall shoe sales in the United States
4. separate your business from competitors.
Alex Banks from High Snob Society wrote an article called: The Lebron James Effect, an economy built on one man.
This article outlines how powerful a properly executed endorsement campaign can be. It elaborates this point through the example of Good Life tires and how they gained tremendous market share, generating nearly 30 million dollars from a single campaign.
Having someone of status be the face of your brand or campaign can be the necessary boost to drastically separate your company from others in the industry.
Another bonus is that most companies think they can not afford an athlete or celebrity campaign. False.
5. create ads that make consumers pause.
With millions of advertisers on Facebook and ads appearing every 15 seconds for users of the app, marketing is becoming increasingly difficult. They key is to have your message break free of the “white noise ads” and cause the reader or viewer to pause long enough to hear what you have to say.
If consumers see a celebrity that they admire or already follow, they are far more likely to stop than if they see just an average post of someone or something they do not know. People are inherently curious and envious creatures! Leveraging the use of well-established celebrities finishes half the work for you and drives a powerful audience!
Use Athletes to stand out in your marketing campaigns! You will not regret it!