Tag: Sponsorship

Top 10 Sponsorship Sales Tips 6th December, 2010

Sponsorship sales cannot be done by ad sales teams!

Great sponsorship sales people are hard to come by. Successful sponsorship sales people typically have a unique combination of skills including marketing, planning, communication and of course sales to be able to stay in the industry. We try to help uncover the secrets of success by outlining Slingshot Sponsorship’s Top 10 Sponsorship Sales tips:

Sell the benefit: in sponsorship, benefits vary depending on the sponsor company and rights owner. Sponsorship sales people are able to articulate this by taking one benefit and adjusting it to meet the needs of the prospect. For example, a VIP table at an event may be perfect for dining clients as well as equally perfect for incentivising staff. This leads on to the second tip…
Do your research: in order to sell the benefit, you need to understand the prospect’s objectives and how your sponsorship can meet those needs.
Speak in their language: although everyone in the sponsorship industry understands what activation is, the CEO of a telecommunications company who has never sponsored anything previously will not know what this means. By speaking in the same language, you are not only understanding the prospect, but also making it very easy for them to say yes.
Create tangible benefits: brand association is a word thrown around a lot. Of course this is one of the benefits of sponsorship; however, is incredibly difficult to justify. Great sponsorship sales people talk about prestige of association, but rarely lead with this.
Measurement: sponsorship sales people understand ROI and how to attribute sponsorship to it. Measurement is key and is always brought up in sponsorship sales conversations.
Mimic body language: by mirroring their body language (not in an obvious way!) you help make them feel at ease.
Listen: without listening, you won’t understand the brief or their objectives.
Provide solutions: sponsorship is a cost-effective marketing technique with added value. Explaining sponsorship as a marketing tool and comparing this against their other marketing platforms within their marketing mix is key.
Talk about their business: by understanding their business, you will be well on your way to helping their business.
Smile: people like to work with people that they like. This of course doesn’t always happen, but it goes a long way in deciding who to build a long term relationship with!

Professional Associations in their search for Sponsorship Sterling 1st December, 2010

Sponsorship is growing rapidly in professional associations. No matter the prime objective of the particular trade body, whether they represent shipping companies or small digital businesses, they all share in common the predicament of shrinking revenue streams from membership fees.

Professional associations used to be key in growing and developing brands. However, with the ever present flow of information, documents, best practice guides, white papers, and social networks available for free, membership benefits are now less vital to business success. This puts professional associations in a very difficult situation. They have less revenue to provide membership value, and yet are faced with current members demanding more value from their membership. An almost impossible task.

In the past, events tended to be the second main source of revenue for professional associations, with delegate tickets far exceeding the supplementary sponsorship income. However, in a time where free events are occurring daily and webinars are streamed from around the globe directly into people’s homes, even this ‘secondary’ form of income is finding difficulty in meeting targets.

Furthermore, our current economic climate continues to add strain professional associations are already feeling. Budgets are being scruitinised and marketing directors are prioritising gauranteed and tangible ROI before writing any marketing expenses.

As a result, professional associations have had to start finding new ways of providing value to their members, which is the reason we are finding an increasing number of sponsorship proposals and opportunities available. Sponsorship has therefore become a key revenue stream for many professional associations, for it reaches both revenue and engagement objectives.

The changes have also greatly affected the Direct Marketing Association – Europe’s largest trade body in the marketing and communications sector. Chris Combemale, executive director, claims that sponsorship is now crucial to the mission of the DMA. He commented, “Through the additional revenue of sponsorship, we can expand the number of professional services we provide, as well as the number of insight and networking events we offer. These activities are integral to our purpose of promoting the business interests of our members and driving the growth of the direct marketing industry. Of course, through pairing our sponsor partners with suitably themed platforms we ensure maximum relevance and mutual benefit to their target market.”

Although these sponsorship proposals are on the rise with professional associations, there are nonetheless pros and cons to integrating the two successfully:

Pros

Value for the Professional Association: Sponsorship revenue amongst professional associations accounts for a large portion of total sponsorship revenue. Whilst perhaps not as newsworthy as larger sporting events such as the World Cup, it significantly increases funding for many not-for-profit organisations, enabling them to continue to grow in the future. Implementing a successful sponsorship department can thus help to create a sustainable organisation.
Value for Members: Sponsorship not only provides a new revenue stream, but it also provides values for your current members. A basic key benefit to membership is the networking opportunities and brand awareness professional associations can provide. Sponsorship goes beyond this basic benefit and provides engagement with the members through tangible touchpoints, enabled through sponsorship activation. Providing sponsorship opportunities provides value to your members by helping them to reach their current marketing objectives.
Value for the Audience: Sponsors add significant value to the events and programmes that they support. This is especially true with professional associations as they tend not to be as forward thinking as brand companies due to a lack of resource and funds. By having a sponsor involved, the professional association has the ability to utilise some of the sponsor’s resources and create a more exciting event for the attendees.

Cons

Lack of Resource: Sponsorship is not just a sales pitch. It requires strategic thinking in developing the programme as well as significant resource in account management. Successful sponsorship only occurs when there is a partnership built between both the sponsor and the rights owner. This can only be built through communication and a very solid understanding of the other’s objectives. Typically, professional associations are under resourced. This means that while sponsorship may be initiated, it is often unable for it to be sustained. This can then create bad blood between the professional association and its members, a result of which may be that the rights owner is pressured to refund the sponsorship money in order to maintain goodwill. In such a situation, it would appear the professional association would have been better off not partaking in the sponsorship deal in the first place.
Lack of Understanding by Members: For professionals outside the world of sponsorship, it can be very difficult to understand its benefits. Particularly in a world where Marketing Directors are under pressure to deliver leads and guaranteed ROI. Sponsorship can thus seem very intangible – in which case, even the best sponsorship proposal cannot compete against pay-per-click advertising.
Lack of Expertise: Sponsorship is complex, and needs to be strategically developed in order to work with all parties successfully. Professional associations rarely have this experience in-house, making it difficult to manage and develop. Fortunately, there are blogs, forums and websites dedicated to explaining sponsorship benefits, however none of these can surpass having sponsorship experience at hand.

Some key questions professional associations need to ask themselves before undertaking a significant sponsorship programme would be:

Find out if sponsorship is right for you. Do you have the resource and time to dedicate to developing this into your organisation?
Understand your members and what they want – will members be upset if they are financially unable to take up some of these new sponsorship opportunities?
Do you have an audience that is large or niche enough to build an asset from?
Do you have in-house sponsorship experience or do you know of a sponsorship agency that can help?

Sponsorship is a fantastic way to bring additional value to professional associations, particularly in this current economic climate. However, you need to be very careful in its implementation and development in order to create sponsorship that is sustainable, as well as successful.

Jackie Fast Launches Slingshot Sponsorship 7th September, 2010

Specialist sponsorship agency secures the Direct Marketing Association UK (DMA), Periodical Publishers Association (PPA), UK AWARE, iheartfashion, and the Data Publishers Association (DPA) as first clients.

London, 7 September 2010 – Jackie Fast, the former head of the DMA’s sponsorship and affinity partnership department has launched her own agency, Slingshot Sponsorship Ltd (localhost:8080/slingshotsponsorship.com). In response to the growing need of expertise in sponsorship strategy, the agency is pioneering a new wave of marketing specialising in sponsorship that communicates across all vertical sectors and channels.

Slingshot Sponsorship will be using both national and international sponsorship experience as well as innovative marketing techniques with a focus on brand engagement through digital channels and social media. Jackie has worked with major brands including Royal Mail, Equifax, Xerox and ITV building sponsorship campaigns in the marketing services sector.

Slingshot Sponsorship specialises in corporate funding and asset management for music artists, professional associations, sporting competitions, as well as arts and cultural events. In addition, they will be working with leading consumer brands and international agencies to help enhance and negotiate future sponsorship campaigns.

Jackie Fast, managing director at Slingshot Sponsorship comments, “The market is shifting towards partnership marketing approaches and creating synergy between organisations. This shift created a surge in mid-market sponsorship during the recession, which has caught on with atypical rights holders. Whereas in the past sponsorship would only be sourced for large consumer events such as Formula1, we are now seeing brands take advantage of smaller and more engaged platforms generated through professional associations, music tours, and bespoke events. Instead of corporate excess of hospitality, this new wave of sponsorship brings a high level of engagement with the brand at a fraction of the cost of advertising.”

Jackie continues, “Slingshot Sponsorship aims to help rights owners effectively take advantage of this shift. Not only ensuring that the rights owner can develop a sustainable new revenue stream, Slingshot Sponsorship ensures that the programmes in place add value to all parties involved – propelling the brand, adding value to the audience, and providing additional capital to the rights holder. Furthermore, with the increase of sponsorship opportunities now available, Slingshot Sponsorship will help brands consolidate the opportunities to choose the right fit for their objectives.”

At launch, Slingshot Sponsorship has been selected by the Direct Marketing Association to manage and develop all of their current sponsorship opportunities including the DMA Awards. For UK AWARE and iheartfashion, Slingshot Sponsorship will manage all of their partnerships and consult on PR, media and communications. The DPA & PPA have also come on board as first clients of Slingshot Sponsorship who have been tasked with managing corporate sponsorship sales.

Slingshot Sponsorship is based in Central London, UK and works with both national and international clients.

Collaboration – it’s everywhere 10th August, 2010

A new wave of marketing seems to be emerging everywhere. Collaboration, synergy, sponsorship, integration, partnership, engagement, and branded content are terms heard on a daily basis. You could even argue that the UK government is joining this shift in marketing by uniting two different parties to reach one goal – although that might be a little bit harder to argue.

It seems obvious that this shift has been made so apparent because of the recession – brands and marketing teams are now forced to find new ways of obtaining the same results with half the budget and half the resource. Partnerships have proven to be the perfect solution. By partnering with engagement at the core, brands are able to achieve more than what they could have achieved alone.

The most interesting thing about this shift is not the shift itself, but the outcome, which will ensure this shift will continue well after we are in recovery. An outcome which has seen a more engaged audience, more innovative marketing campaigns, and strategic partnerships across all sectors and channels.

This outcome has been so influential that ITV now have a Content Partnerships department, independent films are signing sponsorship agencies to generate funding, and multi-national agencies are starting specialised sponsorship divisions to grab some of the market share. Professional associations, product launches, independent films, and band tours are now realising how beneficial these types of sponsorships are. Sponsorship funding is a multi-billion pound industry in the UK and everyone wants to get a piece of that pie.

But the best part about shifting sponsorship insight into the mainstream is the value – done well, these partnerships add value to all parties involved. The rights owner receives additional sponsorship funding, the sponsor receives a receptive targeted audience, and the audience receives added value through more engagement with the event. In a win-win-win situation, I anticipate sponsorship and collaboration in all forms to continue to grow well into the future.

NEWER POSTS