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CIMSPA & DMI Partnership: Empowering Sports Professionals through Digital Marketing Training
How non-profit organization CIMSPA created an award-winning Digital Marketing Hub to upskill 8,000+ sports professionals. “We are delighted that the Digital Marketing Hub has been acknowledged as an industry leading people development programme for digital marketing skills in the sport and physical activity sector. This amazing free resource can help people promote their activity sessions and clubs across digital platforms.”
Adam Freeman-PaskHead of Digital Innovation at Sport England (CIMSPA’s funder)
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Overview
Founded in 1921, CIMSPA helps regulate and develop best practices for organisations, professionals, and practitioners in the sports and physical activity sector.
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The Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA) is the UK’s professional development body for the sector. To enable meaningful connections between its members and audience, CIMSPA wanted to create a learning hub that enhanced digital marketing capabilities.
The Challenge
The challenge for many in the sport and physical activity sector is that the world of digital marketing can be daunting, particularly for self-employed professionals, those part of a small team or organizations reliant on volunteers.
Kate Dale, Director of Marketing at Sports England (a funder of the CIMSPA) says: “If you’re trying to reach new participants and retain existing ones, digital marketing is an incredibly valuable resource available – quite literally – at your fingertips. But it can be quite daunting knowing how to make best use of the channels, tools and techniques on offer.”
The leisure, sport, fitness and health sector is dedicated to improving people’s mental and physical wellbeing through physical activity. It also wants to engage with low socio-economic groups which was proving to be a challenge as they were hard to reach without understanding how to use digital channels effectively.
“When we started exploring digital marketing across sport and physical activity, we found that 63% of respondents according to research by CIMSPA & Digital Marketing Institute didn’t have a clear plan to attract new audiences through digital channels – even though 81% said that attracting new participants was very or extremely important,” says Ali Donnelly, Executive Director of Sport England.
“This evidence was compelling enough to create the Digital Marketing Hub to help us close the skills gap so that the sector could emerge in an even stronger place than it was prior to Covid-19,” Donnelly concludes.

The Solution
To empower their members and professionals in the sector, CIMSPA looked to find a partner that could help them create an accessible and useful community platform with a focus on digital marketing.
After exploring the variety of training providers on the market, CIMSPA partnered with the Digital Marketing Institute and Google in 2021. As a result, the Digital Marketing Hub (DMH) was born!
“Our commitment to supporting the sports and physical activity community and professionals in achieving marketing success is driven by our mission to help marketers reach their full potential. In collaboration with CIMSPA, we’re thrilled to offer a variety of webinars, toolkits, digital marketing lessons, and more to enhance their digital marketing capabilities,” says Mischa McInerney, Marketing Director at the Digital Marketing Institute.
As part of the partnership, DMI provided CIMSPA & DMH Community with award-winning digital marketing content ranging from digital strategy to social media and email marketing, resources, lessons, and hosted webinars with industry experts.

The Results
The award-winning Digital Marketing Hub has had a huge impact on the leisure, sport, fitness and health sector.
Following its launch in September 2021, CIMSPA expanded the initiative to deliver a coaching program in January 2022 followed by a Gold Accelerator program in Jan 2023 and launching the inaugural Digital Marketing Festival (DMF) in April 2023.

In terms of the Digital Marketing Hub’s impact and activity, it has:
Amassed 8,070 registered users (May 2023) across all roles and settings of sports, physical activity, fitness and leisure
Improved 88% of members’ skills and confidence in digital marketing
Delivered 20 live webinars across a range of topics including social media, websites, SEO, content, email marketing and more
Generated 1,205 attendances through the webinar program with a user average rating of 8.5/10
Won Silver at the Learning Awards 2023 by the Learning and Performance Institute
As one Digital Marketing Hub member put it: “Wow, what an amazing resource. It’s jam-packed full of useful posts, in-depth webinars on a massive range of topics and a whole wealth of knowledge. Crucially the vibe is incredibly supportive whether for first steps of encouraging the more capable in the community to stretch even further. So pleased to be a member.”
In terms of changing behavior, DMH members found that:
88% gained more confidence in digital marketing
66% felt more confident communicating in an inclusive way
83% improved their digital marketing skills
54% improved how they communicate with people from low socioeconomic groups
Over half were active in digital marketing with 19% starting digital marketing for the first time
63% applied new skills from the DMH to improve their social media marketing and 42% applied new learnings to a digital marketing strategy
55% saw increased awareness around digital marketing and 46% reported increased engagement
According to one member: “DMH has given me an understanding of all elements of digital marketing and how to integrate it into daily practices in bite-sized pieces and add it to the overall business strategy.”
As a result of the Digital Marketing Festival (already scheduled for 2023), 64 percent of attendees felt more confident in their digital marketing skills while 100 percent said the event made them more positive about digital marketing.
As the Digital Marketing Hub continues its partnership with the Digital Marketing Institute, it aspires to grow its influence across the sector and expand the range of content and support in the realm of sports marketing.
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