It’s a new year at Temple University in the athletics department with new faces and new ideas.

Temple University is no stranger to the concept of branding. Temple Athletics, especially, is currently in a state of rebranding. This includes a complete redesign of owlsports.com, the facilities, and our voice. Let’s take a look at the 5 Core Digital Branding Strategies and how Temple Athletics can capitalize on them.

Access:

Owlsports.com, the Temple Athletics website does create sustainable access for customers. They do this by creating a direct tab to grab tickets, user accounts (with an ID #) to save information, allowing students to get free tickets, and by creating the ability to scan IDs on a mobile device to create a simpler process.

Areas for Improvement: Create an “Owlsports” app, improve mobile Owlsports.com, improve the loading time of owlsports.com, post the schedules on the landing page so it is more visible, and create an alumni discount.

Engage:

How to get Temple fans connected with the athletics department is the problem that is to be solved. This can be solved by offering content to capture the user’s attention, giving simple formatting to display schedules, and offering access to tickets that could keep users engaging with Temple Athletics.

The video content for Temple Athletics is stunning. With hype videos, interviews, and game recaps scattering owlsports.com, fans have premium content to share with their network.

Areas for Improvement: Earning the attention of the audience for good reasons is a factor Temple Athletics will need to start to improve on to grow in this digital age. A team that does this specifically well is our Temple Women’s Gymnastics team. They have created content that stands apart from the rest. They have adapted their own content to spark and shine like their uniforms. Video interviews with team members create engaging conversations for fans. This strategy has earned them over 10k followers on Instagram.

Customization:

In the world of collegiate athletics, customization is hard to come by. We see a lot of programs copying off of each other to fulfill the need of the “average fan”. However, Temple fans are different from Penn State fans, and from Notre Dame fans. We must learn what exactly they are looking for from Temple Athletics.

By evaluating the Owlpsorts.com Google Analytics account, one can see where users are spending their time, where they are leaving, what they are searching for, and when they are engaging with content within the website.

Areas for Improvement: Every fan/customer wants something different from Temple Athletics. Creating a “favorite” option for fans to “like” sports they would like to interact with could give a great customization feature. If someone wants to see rowing, they aren’t being serviced by being bombarded with soccer. We already have the capacity for this feature by utilizing the account feature on owlsports.com

Helping fans decide which events to attend starts with education and providing information. It’s about giving customers every option to find any information about anyone within Temple Athletics.

Connect:

Temple University, in general, walks a fine line when it comes to connecting with fans within the community. Our school is placed in an area unlike any other. Temple Athletics must be self-aware if they would like to build a meaningful relationship

By creating an experience for the fans to enjoy themselves while cheering on their favorite Cherry and White teams they break down this wall of Temple vs the fans. Putting out surveys and polls is always a great way to crowdsource information directly from your users.

Collaborate:

In today’s age, the audience is equipped with more skills than ever. Fans provide free content. Once again, their limits are related to NCAA rules. Universities must be careful of who and what they are reposting to stay within compliance with regulations. However, Temple could work directly with the Temple students to produce content. Working with entire classes could be a concept rather than just individual creators.

Fans can provide post-game interviews for content and how they felt about the game. Thus, thoroughly engaging each person who attends a Temple Athletics-affiliated event. Creating an experience. Fans want to connect with the athletes. They want to see their teams doing well.

Sources: 

Rogers, D. L. (2016). The digital transformation playbook rethink your business for the Digital age. Columbia Business School Publishing.