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    Why sports celebrity businesses are more T20 than test cricket

    Synopsis

    GoDaddy's Nikhil Arora shares his take on what these businesses need to do to turn fans into loyal customers.

    yuvraj-singh
    Yuvraj Singh’s investment firm YouWeCan Venture is one of the earliest examples of Indian sports celebrity businesses that have found success.
    By Nikhil Arora

    The synergies between sport and entrepreneurship are many. Sportspeople are groomed to develop mental attributes like perseverance, drive to win, ability to bounce back from failure and ability to perform under pressure – all factors that have a very strong bearing on the survival and success of a new business. And if the sportsperson we’re talking about is a successful one – a celebrity – then their fan following and reach makes it a business opportunity just waiting to be taken.

    This has especially been true in India, over the last decade. With social media and improved reach and marketing of live games, sports celebrities are discovering the true power of their personal brands. And while in most cases their first off-field exposure to business is through endorsement deals, many of our sports stars have been savvy enough to kick-start their own ventures while still being active on the field.

    Yuvraj Singh’s investment firm YouWeCan Ventures, Sachin Tendulkar’s investments in startups like Smaaash (sports simulation) and Universal Sportsbiz (celebrity merchandise), and Mahesh Bhupati’s sports management and sports based e-commerce businesses (Globosport, Zeven), are some of the earliest examples of Indian sports celebrity businesses that have found success. And a few years ago, our perennial Captain Cool, MS Dhoni ventured into sportswear and fitness businesses that are well-placed to capitalise on his persona and fan following.
    Sports celebrity-led businesses are actually a niche with some pretty unique advantages and challenges. The advantages are easy enough to assess: reach that even most established businesses can only dream of; passionate belief and loyalty of followers that can take years and years for regular brands to develop; and, definitely not the least important, the kind of money and resources that can make things happen without so many of the compromises and trade-offs that most new businesses have to make.

    Straight to the Slog Overs
    The challenges, though, arise from these very same factors. Most new businesses spend a fair bit of time in relative obscurity, even after launch. This gives them the freedom to live-test ideas, work on market feedback and evolve into their most successful version. The high-voltage visibility of a celebrity business can curtail this freedom to a large extent. Fans expect a celebrity led business to be as pitch-perfect, as responsive, and as strong on delivery as their icons, right from the start. Also, given the sheer volume of a celebrity sports person’s reach, the new business may have to deliver these, straight off the bat, to thousands of consumers. And all this while keeping quality, strategic price points and market competition at the forefront of the business strategy.

    Given how quickly it is judged by consumers therefore, in terms of scale, performance and positioning, a celebrity led business is usually playing a T20, where other businesses may have the luxury of at least a one-day match, if not a test.

    The Technology Toolkit: Digital technology is empowering all new businesses to acquire and retain customers, surpassing traditional limitations of reach and infrastructure. Sports star led businesses start with tremendous potential reach, but they need to integrate digital as a core component of their market strategies right at the start, to actually convert this reach.

    Search for identity: Ultimately, the business has to be vested with an identity and space of its own, where its quality and value can speak for themselves. Even brick and mortar businesses today need to ensure that customers who wish to ‘check them out’ online before doing business with them are not lost. A relevant, easily identifiable domain-name is thus one of the essentials, followed by a website whose design and experience reflects the star’s own global positioning. A well-crafted search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy is the third important pillar here, so that finding and accessing the business is seamless for the curious as well as serious customers.

    Performance above par: Typically, websites of sports celebrity led businesses are heavy on visual and video content, with various widgets for engagement and social media sharing built in. And they receive pretty high volumes of traffic right from launch. All of this places great emphasis on the performance of the site, as even the most committed followers will be turned off by slow loading or unavailable websites.

    Serious Engagement: When followers become customers, they expect the same level of responsiveness, access and engagement with the business as they get from any of its competitors. Engaging content over blogs and social media, regular updates over email, personalised offers, birthday wishes and more for the most loyal customers, and responsive customer service are all basic but powerful engagement features that deliver customer satisfaction and retention.

    Read Also: Why moment marketing is a phenomenon among brands like Amul, Netflix

    The success mantras for any business will always be customer-focused design, and acquisition strategies that speak the language and use the channels of today’s market. However, with sports star led businesses, it is the next steps in the customer journey – retention and ongoing engagement – that need to come into play much, much sooner for the business to truly capitalise on the star’s reach and persona.

    -The author is vice president and managing director, GoDaddy India. Views expressed are personal
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