Small Business, Big Impact: Use Sports to Elevate Your Brand

Unlock a high-return, low-cost marketing channel for your small business by using the power of sports

When you run a small business, every penny of your marketing budget has to deliver results. Whether it’s Google Ads, a newsletter or social media, standing out from the crowd is the key to engaging with your target audience.

At the same time as businesses like yours look for innovative marketing solutions, there are many athletes, even Olympians, who don’t make a living from their sport despite performing at the highest level. They offer highly-engaged audiences which are often geographically tied to specific areas, whether that be where they live, train, or even compete.

Forming a partnership with one of those athletes can be hugely beneficial to your business. Whether you offer a service or a product, trust is key – and that’s why turning to athletes offers an elevated ambassador for your brand.

What’s the benefit to me?

A growing number of small businesses are turning to athletes to help advertise their services and win business.

Athletes can offer you things like hospitality packages, which you can pass on to clients of yours or take advantage of yourself, or tickets to events. You may also have benefits such as your business name in the athlete’s social media bio, or other social media promotion.

For example, Contested recently worked with an IT consultancy business to help them unlock the power of sports marketing. The company’s values of security and trust were key to their messaging. Their main channel of communication with their potential customers was a newsletter. We paired them with a high-performance athlete who is a serving member of the military. The athlete created content for the business’s newsletter and social media channels about the military’s values and how they match with the business’s aim to protect their customers. Despite a modest budget, the campaign was a huge success, surpassing the targets set by the company’s marketing manager for lead generation and engagement on the website.

Interested in seeing how an athlete could help your business? Try a Contested demo, which suggests options that could work for you.

What businesses can partner with athletes?

Any business can partner with an athlete. Sportspeople naturally bring powerful stories with them — tales of perseverance, triumph, and discipline. Incorporating these narratives into your marketing can humanize your brand and create compelling content. Whether through social media posts, video campaigns that you can share with your client list, or in-person events, athletes can add a personal dimension to your brand that resonates with your audience.

Many of them have jobs alongside their sport, so it’s even possible to be connected with an athlete who works in the same field as you.
If you offer a service like accounting or legal support, sponsoring an athlete is a great way to generate exciting content for your website and social media, as well as promoting good feeling towards your business in your area.

How athletes help you demonstrate social value

Increasingly, businesses are prioritizing making a genuinely positive impact on the local area. In fact, social value work is becoming a more regular requirement for businesses to demonstrate during tender processes. Sponsoring an athlete is a great social value initiative, as you are not only supporting their career, but enabling them to be a positive role model in your area.

Clients like seeing you deliver value to your community. By helping an athlete, you are signaling to your customers that you are a business that gives back.

How much does it cost?

There is no set cost for partnership. The typical athlete sponsorship range is $1-5k per year, but there are also opportunities to partner with athletes on a smaller scale, such as buying boots or equipment for an athlete, or a larger scale such as a longer-term financial partnership.

How to get started

At Contested, we connect athletes with small businesses in their area to create effective and impactful partnerships with affordable and flexible options for any business.