blogs for sponsorship seekers Archives - Power Sponsorship

How to Spot a Sponsorship Broker Scam (and One Broker You Need to Avoid)

Really good sponsorship brokers are rare. They have extensive connections, strong skills, and a good work ethic. They’ll represent your property well, deal with you professionally, and will be worth every penny they cost. Unfortunately, unscrupulous broker scams appear to be on the rise, and it’s causing immense damage to the organisations that fall for their wiles. You think the broker has contacted you because they believe you could raise more sponsorship than you currently have, and they can use their connections, skills, and reputation to secure it and take a cut. But that’s not the business model most scammers actually have. No, scam brokers make big promises, but they don’t secure any sponsorship. They […] Read More

You’ve Got the Big Sponsor, Here’s How Not to Screw It Up

The sponsorship industry is rife with advice on how to sell sponsorship. A quick search of the web will net you literally thousands of articles telling you which sponsors to target, how to contact the right people, how to develop offers, how to write proposals, on and on and on. Hell, my own blog is full of that kind of advice. Some of the sponsorship sales advice you’ll find on the web is fantastic, while some is… uhh… let’s just say the opposite of fantastic. But whatever the quality, there’s absolutely no question that there’s a lot of it. All this, while an equally important component of successful sponsorship is largely overlooked: How not to […] Read More

Does Sponsorship Affect Share Price?

A few years back, I read an article entitled, “The Impact of Sponsorship on Share Price Brand Value”. The main assertion is that companies that sponsor have better performing share prices than companies that don’t. While that was the first time I’d seen anyone make that contention in any serious way, I continue to hear it from conference speakers, and in articles and blogs, to this day. On one hand, I can believe that there is a correlation. On the other, I think implying causation could be a long bow to draw. Sponsorship, and in particular modern, strategic sponsorship, is a powerful marketing tool. Is the correlation in share price performance simply because better, more […] Read More

The First Sponsor Meeting (and How Not to Make an Idiot of Yourself)

The first meeting with a sponsor is both the most important, and the easiest to screw up. Sponsors know what they want to hear, they know the red flags, and if you get it wrong, you could foul a potential deal, and not even know why. This is a complete rewrite of a very popular blog I first wrote years ago, updating it to reflect the most modern take on sponsorship. It outlines the requirements and pitfalls that every rightsholder needs to know, , in order to make it through this very tricky phase of a sponsorship sale. Know the real goal You’re selling sponsorship, so you’d think the goal of your first meeting with […] Read More

Four Other Reasons You Might Need a Sponsorship Consultant

The normal role of a sponsorship consultant is to offer expert strategic advice, generally based on a reasonably long history of doing good work for good clients. That’s certainly what I do most of the time. There are, however, other reasons you may want a sponsorship consultant – reasons that are a bit outside the norm, but every bit as strategic. I thought I might run through a few very useful – but somewhat different – ways to use a sponsorship consultant. Objectivity Companies can often be insular places, and sometimes, you just need an outside viewpoint. A good example of this is when doing a sponsorship audit. Without objectivity, your portfolio audit may concentrate […] Read More

What Should a Rightsholder Include in a Year-End Sponsorship ROI Report?

Nothing. Measuring sponsorship is not your job. You’re probably thinking to yourself, “If I can’t prove what the sponsorship delivered, then they won’t renew”. And to an extent, you’re right. If the sponsor doesn’t know what they accomplished, they’re not going to renew. But it’s not your responsibility to measure returns, and more to the point, it’s impossible. In this rewrite of a vintage blog, I’m going to show you why, and what you should do instead. Rightsholders can’t measure results The only organisation that can measure the returns against a sponsor’s objectives is the sponsor. When a sponsor invests in sponsorship, they are investing in opportunity, not results. It’s the sponsor’s leverage program that […] Read More

How Do Sponsors Evaluate Sponsorship Proposals?

Sponsorship proposal evaluation comes down to two major factors: What you offer; and who you submit it to. These are the factors that will tell a sponsor whether what you’re offering is right for them, whether you’ll be easy to work with, and whether you have the skills and approach that will allow today’s modern sponsors to make the most of what you’re offering. In this blog – a total rework of a blog from a a few years ago – I’m going to address both of these critical factors. Your proposal Both the structure and content of your proposal will tell a sponsor a lot about whether, and to what degree, your offer is […] Read More

Why You Shouldn’t Sell Sponsor Mentions as a Sponsorship Benefit

It used to be that 99% of sponsorship proposals were made up of the following four or five benefits: Logos on things Tickets to things Some kind of hospitality An official designation Some kind of exhibition space or speaking slot (if applicable) The result was that hundreds of thousands of amazing properties were commoditising themselves; selling themselves as a numbers game, and ignoring their real value to sponsors. (For more on how modern sponsorship really works, read my white paper, “Disruptive Sponsorship”.) In recent years, another benefit has joined that list of low-value, hygiene benefits: Social media mentions I’ve worked with a lot of rightsholders that have told me how this has given them “more […] Read More

How Many Times Do You Have to Miss Your Sponsorship Target before You Change Your Approach?

How many times will you miss your sponsorship target? How many times will you scramble for rats and mice sponsorship to make up a shortfall? How many times will you ask your board to hit up their well-connected friends, because your business case isn’t getting money in the door? How many times will you point to workload, economic conditions, unreasonable sponsors who “just don’t get it”, or sheer bad luck, when you fail to balance the bottom line? How many excuses will you make? At some point, your excuses and workarounds just aren’t going to cut it anymore, and your organisation will need to accept that it’s nobody’s fault but yours. Yeah, I know… sounds […] Read More

Valuing Contra vs Cash Sponsorship

This is another of my vintage blogs, reworked and updated to reflect changes in best practice, and new angles. How to value contra, otherwise known as in-kind, sponsorship is a question I get almost every day. What is most interesting is how differently sponsors and sponsorship seekers view contra, and they both overcomplicate what is really quite a simple equation. Sponsorship seekers take contra for granted. Well, okay… most sponsorship seekers take contra for granted. The attitude is, “those airline seats would be empty anyway, so why do we have to put a value on them?” Newsflash: If you didn’t get those seats through contra, you would have to pay someone for them, so they […] Read More