Macclesfield Town go up to the football league – #Champions
Firstly, a huge well done to everyone at Macclesfield Town Football Club, with thanks to all the commercial family for their huge support throughout the season.
Almost 12 months ago we partnered with the Silkmen and became their official digital media partner, supporting their online presence with our fantastic digital team, by creating some great ideas and keeping it simple.
Empowering your people
After we signed the agreement, I passed this relationship over to a couple of our team members with Martyn Barrow our regional business development manager at the front of the team to lead this partnership to success, for both us and the club and help galvanise the commercial family.
Together Martyn and the the team have taken the relationship and partnership to a whole new level, we now see the club as an extension of our business and team.
Giving people a goal, with some guidance mixed with opportunity is a great way to get success. This is a great demonstration of that.
Some people asked me, why leave it to them? They are not experts. I believe we can build even higher next season as we have laid some very solid foundations. What we have done in the first year has given me confidence to answer those sceptical people. I wanted them to have no walls and no boundaries with ideas, no idea of what works and what doesn’t, after all success comes from failing but having the passion and persistence to try again and keep learning. This is what the team and Martyn have done, and I can say they have made a great success of it and had a lot of fun along the way.
Empowering people and letting them feel comfortable and confident to fail is a must for me. I didn’t do this partnership all for ROI even though we did get the ROI after 6 months. I wanted to see what can be achieved by enabling some committed, trusted, passionate people to write some goals down from a crazy bunch of ideas. Then empowering and directing the team, and finally adding lots of fun.
The results speak for themselves. We have helped get an average video viewing of between 5-8 thousand per video, engage the local stores and supporters, had over 1 million interactions across our joint social platforms, won lots of new commercial and corporate business, made strong relationships, brought people together, created a reciprocal place for business support, advice and help, and the results carry on…
POST MATCH INTERVIEW: We caught up with John Askey after the match following a fantastic comeback by @thesilkmen! See the full interview over on our Facebook page here https://t.co/f6jYJ0hq8U pic.twitter.com/NPcMIhrFRH
— MID Communications (@MIDCommsUK) 10 February 2018
The club also learned that collaboration of your commercial partners and creating a tighter family of commercial relationships & group will drive the business’ & club’s success. I think more teams should adapt a relationship approach and move away from narrow minded transaction type mentality.
Building relationships, not sales – our approach with Macclesfield Town
Seeing us build strong relationships with people and businesses such as with Jon from Big Brand Ideas, Nick Bianchi from Arighi Bianchi, Macclesfield Town front of shirt sponsor, and so many others shows the power of team work and group passion.
Next time you’re thinking about doing a sponsorship or partnership, think about what is it you really want to achieve. How can you help the club or business? How can you help other businesses already associated move forward?
Doing business like this, builds strong relationships, gets great engagement for your business and people and adds value to your brand and others associated. I’m proud of my team for how they’ve handled this relationship and want to strive for this approach going forward!