Websites for athletes are not a panacea for sponsors marketing challenges. You can’t just build a website for an athlete and expect people to come and interact with your brand. Websites of sponsor’s athletes should complement sponsors other marketing tools to help drive business.
Before companies start using athletes websites to market their brands, they need to think about 2 things: how to create an integrated marketing toolbox that includes athletes websites and creating a plan to leverage athletes online assets with those tools to get interaction with their brands.
Studies show that in order to have any chance of success, an integrated marketing toolbox must include both “online” and “offline” components. Sponsors and athletes must have strong and properly build online presence to increase number of interactions and conversion rates.
Marketing through athletes websites must mesh with your other online marketing efforts (such as e-mail marketing, social marketing, etc). These efforts must be as consistent as possible to ensure that you constantly reinforce your brand.