Slingshot's Top Ten Sponsorship Blogs You Should Read 2012 9th May, 2012

I wrote a Top Ten Sponsorship Blogs You Should Read article last year (to view the last list click here) and thought I’d revise the list for 2012.  There are some old favourites that have remained on our list, but also some new blogs that have launched which are fantastic reads and definitely worth subscribing to.

As the sponsorship industry changes so much and encompasses so many disciplines and mediums, blogs are just one of the ways that the Slingshot team continues to learn from others.  Here are our Top Ten (not in a particular order!):

  1. Synergy Sponsorship Blog: Great overall sponsorship blog from both a sponsorship and brand perspective.  There are many different bloggers and so it provides a good perspective from different angles and the content is always excellent.
  2. Mike Walsh/Tomorrow Blog: although not technically sponsorship, we discovered Mike at our client’s event the BBC Showcase.  Truly inspirational, we’ve been following his blog ever since.  A forward thinker in terms of brand innovation, partnerships and the future of marketing.
  3. Generate Sponsorship Blog: Regularly updated and always worth a read.  It is great for sport sponsorship activations and opinions in the sponsorship industry.
  4. Unofficial Partner – Richard Gillis provides insight on a variety of sponsorship related topics, not to mention he’s a great blogger so it always makes for a great read.
  5. Ben Wells Blog: This is a fantastic blog – Ben thinks very much in line with us at Slingshot and so we wait with anticipation to receive his insight in our inbox.  His experience in the sponsorship industry makes him uniquely placed to provide great opinions into today’s sponsorship marketplace.
  6. Power Sponsorship: Well known in the industry, Kim Skildum-Reid provides practical sponsorship knowledge and best practice tips.
  7. Sponsor Park: A good blog, but more helpful in terms of what sponsorship rights are being purchased, where and by whom.  Sponsor Park highlight the sponsorship deals signed via Twitter so I’d recommend following them @SponsorPark if that’s a key thing you are interested in.
  8. IEG Blog: Provides international insight on the brands that IEG works with – namely in reference to analysis and best practice.
  9. Sports Marketing Frontiers: Another good blog to track newly signed sponsorship deals as well as new sponsorship opportunities that have recently become available.
  10. Slingshot Sponsorship Blog: And of course, we couldn’t miss out our own blog featuring sponsorship insight, top sponsorship tips, and general sponsorship and brand partnership developments.  If you haven’t yet, you can sign up to receive our newsletter here.

Enjoy!

Make Money with your Blog – Monetising Social Media through Sponsorship 25th October, 2011

Monetising social media is a tricky business.  Although we are not experts in this (for social media experts, get in touch and we can pass on some recommendations!), we are however experts at sponsorship and utilising sponsorship to reap financial rewards for our clients.

These sponsorship tips can be utilised on a number of social media platforms, but more commonly can be found and developed on a blog. Freely available (see WordPress), blogs can not only drive conversations and showcase expertise, but can also provide the perfect platform to integrate new sponsorship revenues.

A great example of integrating sponsorship with social media can be seen with the DMA Email Marketing Blog.  A fantastic source for everything email marketing and written by industry gurus, this blog is read globally and has become one of the prime resources for email marketers.

Here are some of our tips for integration:

Audience

Sponsorship is only possible if there is an audience.  Fortunately, the DMA Email Blog had been going for some time and had a significant number of registrants already.  This not only proved that there was appetite for the content, but also that any sponsors involved with the blog would be guaranteed to reach an audience.

Do not try and sell anything until you have a proven audience.

Assets

A number of integrated benefits were provided within the DMA Email Blog sponsorship proposal.  These assets were tailored to reach the prospective sponsor’s objectives – the two most important included:

  1. Opportunity to write guest blogs – providing industry expert positioning
  2. Online display advertising – to promote the services or run competitions

Always think about your prospective sponsors before you look to build the assets into your sponsorship proposal.  What might be something key for you may not be of value to a brand.

Cost

Pricing for sponsorship can vary, but should always have a value attributed to the tangible benefits you can offer.  Tangible benefits typically include media rights, physical space (events), access to a database, etc.  As the DMA already provided online advertising on their homepage and throughout the site, there was a base CPM rate for the audience.  The sponsorship of the DMA Email Marketing Blog was based on this precedent.

In the case where you do not have anything to base your pricing on, refer to other advertising costs for online display in similar fields bearing in mind that your reach with a blog will be far less than with an online publication.

Measurement

Ensure that you have analytics to back up the cost and show the value to the sponsors you are aligning with.  Without measurement in place, sponsorship will have no value and you will not be able to attribute ROI to the brand.

For more information on social media and sponsorship, make sure to check out the presentation Property Rights Owners Make Money with Social Media on SlideShare.

Price Follows Prestige: Brand Asset Valuations 22nd September, 2011

Do you know how much your sponsorship proposal is truly worth?  We do.

One of the key causes of poor sponsorship sales is over-priced fees. This is often down to a methodology which focuses on covering the production costs of a property, rather than looking into the actual market value of the assets offered. Although making a property available for sponsorship can be a lucrative revenue stream, key factors such as the quality and quantity of rights and benefits, establishment of the property and brand exposure are all highly influential in determining the degree of investment a sponsor will be willing to make for association.

Therefore despite an event potentially carrying high production and running costs, rights holders need to be realistic ensuring that sponsorship fees rise in correlation with the calibre of the assets offered. The concept of price following prestige can also be seen by other rights holders within their respective industries, such as a start-up magazine, with the initial focus on publishing quality content and building circulation figures in order to then attract advertising revenue.

In order to create a fair and realistically priced sponsorship proposal, each of the following factors need to be taken into account:

Tangible Assets

These are benefits of a sponsorship package that can be measured and in turn given a specific monetary value, including such factors as signage, media collateral and tickets. Tangible assets are useful in giving the sponsor a direct insight into where a percentage of their investment will be spent.

Intangible Assets

These are qualitative factors that cannot be given an exact value but are also of significant benefit to the sponsor, such as audience engagement, branding prominence, property establishment etc. Intangible assets can only be measured by the opinion of the audience and therefore their value will alter from person to person, depending on perception. However, by conducting research such as surveys, which offer structured and quantitative feedback, a qualitative benefit can be given an estimated market worth.

Exposure and Reach

Whether a brand is looking to reinforce or alter its image via association with a sponsorship platform, this will only be worthwhile if a sizeable audience is going to be reached. Therefore the PR reach and geographical exposure of a brand’s association is a key factor in determining the overall value of a sponsorship package.

Lead-time

Approaching prospective sponsorship leads can be a time intensive process and therefore properties with short lead times (from commencing of sales approaches to execution) should be prepared to lower their fees if wanting to secure any sponsor investment at all. Corporate sponsorship responsibles have a strong knowledge of the properties within their market along with the value of the assets offered. Therefore by reducing fees, companies will be much more likely to invest when presented with a good deal, much more so than paying full price for something that they know the rights holder is in fact desperate to sell.

How can a sponsorship agency help?

Hiring an agency will bring experience and expertise in the area of optimising and valuating existing brand assets as well as discovering new beneficial aspects of a property that the rights holder may not have even thought of. With unjustifiable valuations being one of the key reasons behind unsuccessful sponsorship sales, an agency will help improve a rights holder’s understanding of the assets they are selling plus create additional benefits to offer, instilling confidence in the salesperson whilst providing a significantly more attractive proposition for prospective sponsors to invest in.

For further information on how Slingshot can provide professional advice on brand asset valuations, plus additional insight into your sponsorship potential, see the Slingshot Sponsorship Boot Camp.

Do Social Media Benefits Really Benefit Sponsors? 15th September, 2011

Social media has not only changed the way an audience can interact with a sponsorship property, but also with how they can interact with the sponsors of that property and vice versa.  Without fully understanding social media for the organisation in question, it would be impossible to try and deliver value to a sponsor associated.

Here are some top tips and questions to ask yourself before you consider integrating sponsorship benefits within your sponsorship proposal.

Do You Have an Online Audience?

Many sponsorship proposals include social media activation with their audience for prospective sponsors; however, this is typically even before they’ve even set up the account.  Many rights owners do not realise that it can take a significant amount of resource to develop and manage social networks so make time to do your research before you promise brands something you aren’t able to deliver at the point of signing the contract.

The benefit of social media is that it is instantaneous, but if you haven’t developed your social network before you offer the rights over to a sponsor, you aren’t offering much of anything.

Is Your Social Network Engaged?

Once you’ve built your social network, you need to ensure that the users are engaged with your content.  If you don’t have an engaged audience then there is no benefit to a sponsor of your property because their message will be falling on deaf ears.

5 Tips to Creating Engaging Content:

  1. Be relevant
  2. Provide insight
  3. Offer competitions or money-can’t buy benefits for engaging with you
  4. Provide exclusive content they can’t find anywhere else
  5. If possible, try to be genuinely funny

Does Your Social Network Want to Hear From Your Sponsors?

Your network is important and needs to be treated with care.  Do not sign them up and then bombard them with messages that they do not want to hear.  This rings true for any and all communication, but especially with social media as it far easier to individuals to block messages online than it is through the post.

Make sure to listen to your audience and provide them content that they find valuable.  As long as your sponsor’s messages fall in line with these guidelines you can ensure that you are truly delivering the benefits you are offering.

To connect with Slingshot’s social networks sign up to our Blog or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

What Can I Sell? Top 5 Tips to Uncover Sponsorship Assets 10th August, 2011

We have been doing a lot of Slingshot Sponsorship Boot Camps recently to gear up for the start of September.  As such, I thought I’d start a blog series following what we discuss and some tips to think about when constructing your own sponsorship proposals.

Assets are typically a problem area for rights holders.  Being submersed in their own product, sometimes it’s difficult to uncover something that you see on a daily basis, so these top tips and questions should help you uncover opportunities you haven’t thought of yet!

1.  What communication tools do I have?

Although I am not a fan of badging (plastering logos on any and everything you have), communication to your audience is what the sponsor is after so you need to look at all opportunities to integrate sponsors within those communications, although bearing in mind that engaging communications are better than logos.  Communication can include everything from:

  • Email newsletters (to read more on how, check out my blog post on the DMA Email Blog: Email Sponsorship: How to do it and why?)
  • Printed communications
  • Promotional advertisements
  • Online display
  • Events

2.  Who are your super stars?

Do you have anyone within your company or anyone your company works with that could potentially be an asset to a brand?  If so, and they are willing, you could work with these leaders to provide benefits to your sponsor by speaking at their events or promoting their brand.  Some ideas of unusual super stars could be:

  • Talent or brand ambassadors
  • Politicians
  • Highly successful CEOs who could act as mentors/speakers
  • Musicians/artists

3.  Social media

If you are using social media and have a regular engagement with your audience, this is a great platform for brands to run competitions or promotions.  Typically the audience is younger and more technology friendly so keep the audience in mind when including social media assets within your sponsorship offering.  Social media is a great way for you to add value to a sponsor without much cost, but don’t underestimate the importance of having a ‘working’ social network.  Just tweeting or posting competitions is not enough – you must have a social media strategy which is engaging, both for your property and also for your sponsors.  More about how to integrate sponsorship with social media, read my guest blog post on Content and Motion’s Blog Social Media & Sponsorship: Can Facebook & YouTube Ever Become Co-brandable Assets for Brands?

4.  Partnerships: are there other partnerships that you can leverage for your sponsors?

Media partnerships can be great opportunities to provide content for promotion.  When this works well and everyone is working together these partnerships can be extremely successful.  Integrating these opportunities for your sponsors can add significant value and should be considered, especially if your property does not yet have a large audience.

5.  Extras

Any additional events that you could include, not only add value to the sponsor, but also to your property.  Extras can include providing a Sponsors Lunch or Sponsor’s VIP Reception.  These types of events allow sponsors to network with each other and often uncover other partnership opportunities that can be built around your property through brainstorming synergies.  Especially if these extra events are timed so they coincide with a lull in your marketing schedule, they provide an added opportunity for you to continue building your relationship with your sponsor throughout the year.

Email List Growth: Reaching New Audiences through Sponsorship 7th June, 2011

I recently attended the DMA’s Email Customer Lifecycle Breakfast Briefing with sponsors Silverpop and came away with some refreshing ideas about how to grow email lists.  Working in sponsorship, accessing a list/audience is one of the vital benefits within a sponsorship proposal.  Most often, the audience has not opted in to receive 3rd party communications; however, it is perfectly acceptable and the norm to incorporate sponsor branding within the sponsored event communications.  Options on how to do this successfully were in my last blog Email Newsletter Sponsorship: Who is Getting it Right?

However, badging logos to an email is not always the best way to organically grow your list through sponsorship within eNewsletters.  More integrated approaches can be taken if both parties are flexible, which can create a more engaging relationship with the customer you are trying to reach.

Case Study: A Small World & Boujis

A Small World is similar to a private members online network where the audience is fairly exclusive and difficult to access.  By invite only, a Small World has generated a unique and large enough audience that can become an attractive partner for luxury brands.  Typically this has been done through display advertising.  However, more recently there has been an increase in jointly supported events that are supported by communications sent by both partners to their respective database.  The most recent partner through A Small World’s email newsletter promoting an event with Boujis – a nightclub located in London.

This email was sent by A Small World to their London members.  By avoiding looking overtly commercial and sending communications which the audience has not agreed to receiving, A Small World has promoted their own event showcasing Boujis in the format and copy of the email.  When tickets are reserved, guests are then asked whether they’d like to receive communications and similar invitations to events held with Boujis.  This provides benefit to both parties – enhancing both the A Small World member experience through an exclusive invite specific to their city of residence as well as providing an exclusive audience for Boujis to build brand awareness and showcase their venue to.

In terms of using sponsorship for list growth, this is a great example illustrating how to grow your list organically through a partner – avoiding purchase or rental of data lists.  Instead of spending the money trying to jump start building a new list of customers, Boujis have wisely spent the money in a tailored sponsorship opportunity.  This not only provides them organic list growth, but also alignment with a trusted brand and a tangible event attracting new customers.

I can’t wait for more inspiration and email marketing tips at the second session in the Email Customer Lifecycle sponsored Silverpop  on Conversion,  12 July 2011.  Free to all DMA members, book early to avoid disappointment by emailing [email protected]

To find out more about email marketing, make sure to check out the DMA Email Blog.

Top 5 Reasons Why Your Sponsorship Proposal Isn't Converting Sales 31st May, 2011

We’ve been asked many times to give advice to brands concerned about their inability to source for sponsors.  No matter which sector the opportunity represents, it’s often the sponsorship proposal which is not translating how sponsorship benefits can add value and ROI.  There can be a number of reasons why the sponsorship proposal doesn’t work, but we’d like to highlight the most important:

1. Rambling proposal: bear in mind that Marketing Managers are bombarded almost every day by emails from brands looking for sponsorship funding so make sure that your proposal is attractive and concise to gather their attention quickly. As a rule of thumb, a 2 page proposal with engaging pictures and testimonials would be more than sufficient.

2.  Lack of clarity: make sure the proposal includes a brief description of the event and focuses on how the sponsorship benefits can help them achieve their objectives.  Be very transparent in identifying what you will provide and how much it will cost.

3. Lack of media assets: sponsorship provides brands with content and positioning to maximise their exposure –providing opportunities to shout about their involvement is key.  Ensure you are able to guarantee media and marketing exposure and be explicit about the audience the sponsor will be exposed to.

4. Standard approach: a common mistake that right holders make is to send over standard emails with the sponsorship proposal.  A value proposition will be different for each brand strategy.  Do your research and tailor your sponsorship proposal to focus on how sponsoring your property will help them achieve their objectives.

5.  The wrong contact: you might have the best opportunity in the world clearly illustrated by a concise sponsorship proposal, but if you are sending it to the wrong person, it won’t make a difference.  Depending on the opportunity, you typically would look to speak with the PR/Communications Director, Brand Manager or most often the Marketing Director.  Make sure you know who you are contacting and why, which supplements point 4.

These are some key things you can start fixing right away, but if you want a more tailored solution, we are now offering our Sponsorship Boot Camp, which will help you create sponsorship proposals that turn into revenue.  You can find out more information here.

We have also launched our eNewsletter so you can ensure you receive sponsorship tips throughout the year.  Register here.

“We Have a Great Cause, Why Aren’t We Securing Sponsors?” 4th April, 2011

Charity Sponsorship: Top 3 Reasons Why You Aren’t Selling

I am often asked to provide consultancy to charities on how they can make their sponsorship propositions more attractive to brands.  The charities are often well known and have great causes – with well-planned and well-attended events.  Understandably, it’s difficult to understand why more brands aren’t getting involved. 

After experience and investigation with a number of our charity clients, I’ve discovered that there are some very simple tips to help make charity sponsorship proposals more attractive to secure sales.

1.  Is your sponsorship package worth what you are asking? 

Just because you need a certain amount, that doesn’t mean that your package is worth that amount.  Far too often I see sponsorship proposals that are clearly not valued based on their tangible benefits.  Of course there is a certain amount of association with the charity that is ‘priceless’, but this is not the sole (or even usually the key) reason marketing directors will align their brand to your cause.  However, the weight of sponsorship investment is assumed to be the majority of the charity association with media assets such as PR and print ads ‘thrown in’.  This is definitely not the approach to take when putting together your sponsorship proposition.  Marketing directors are a savvy bunch and they want to see tangible benefits to prove effectiveness.  Which brings me to my second point…

2.  Marketing directors are busy

Marketing directors receive thousands of proposals, opportunities, and ideas that they can choose from to promote their brand.  Your sponsorship proposal is not only competing with other charity proposals, but also all the other available marketing platforms that the brand can align themself to.  It is a cluttered market and you have to be clear and transparent.  Although beautiful powerpoint presentations with great pictures tend to look great – they make for impractical sponsorship proposals. 

Of course the sponsorship proposal will depend on your programme as this format can be effective for selling emotive campaigns.  However, more often than not, it is rarely the most suitable option.

3.  Make more time

Charities tend to work with limited resources and find it difficult to put all the plans in place well in advance.  As such, they don’t start approaching sponsors until they have all of the event information confirmed – typically 3 months before the event takes place.  This is typically the time they think it is appropriate to approach sponsors.

Although the event could be absolutely ideal for a brand’s positioning and objectives, very few brands have spare funds within their marketing budget or the additional resource to make use of the opportunity.  Marketing budgets are typically planned at least 1 year in advance.  Regardless of how much they may want to get involved, they will not have the budget to do so. 

As such, charities need to either:

a) start working on the events plan earlier,

b) start approaching brands earlier, or

c) aim to only secure sponsorship for the annual events that have a clear direction and plan in place.

We have recently signed some great charity clients (such as Mencap) and will be blogging more charity sponsorship tips throughout the year.  Make sure to check back often or subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss anything!

The Bribery Act's Implications on Sponsorship 17th March, 2011

If you weren’t yet aware, there is a battle in the UK on the draft Bribery Act, currently under review by the coalition government.  Should this act go through, it would have implications on the sponsorship industry.

Some key implications under the Bribery Act:

  • Will introduce a corporate offence of failure to prevent bribery by persons working on behalf of a business. A business can avoid conviction if it can show that it has adequate procedures in place to prevent bribery.
  • Make it a criminal offence to give, promise or offer a bribe and to request, agree to receive or accept a bribe either at home or abroad. The measures covers bribery of a foreign public official.
  • Increase the maximum penalty for bribery from 7 – 10 years imprisonment, with an unlimited fine.

Think!Sponsorship has teamed up with leading sponsorship lawyers Farrer & Co to poll the sponsorship industry regarding the Act and the use of hospitality.

Check out the session on hospitality and the Bribery Act at the upcoming conference on the 12th April 2011.  The session and the results of the poll should give both sponsors and rights holders an accurate idea of how to ensure they are compliant with the proposed Act and to discuss how corporate hospitality might stray into bribery.

Please make sure to participate by taking the survey here.

Results of which will be made available at the end of March 2011.