Before you dive in, if you are interested in podcast sponsorship, check out these titles in our “sponsorship for podcasters” series:...
Archive: Sponsorship
The latest industry news, interviews, technologies, and resources.
Cold Email Strategies for Podcast Sponsorship
Before you dive in, if you are interested in podcast sponsorship, check out these titles in our “sponsorship for podcasters” series:...
Sponsorship Follow-Up: The Art of Overcoming Objections
“What do you mean you sold the last spot!? We’ve worked together for years and you sold my sponsorship package to my competitors?” My heart sank. I had an irate sponsor on the phone, or former sponsor in this case, who clearly wanted to come on board but I didn’t give him the chance to. My reasoning? I didn’t want to be pushy or rude and I assumed his responses to me were polite “no thank yous.”
If Gold, Silver, Bronze Is So Bad, Why Do They Use It?
Sometimes I feel like I live in two worlds. In world one, I work with brands (i.e. sponsors) who hate (and I mean HATE) gold, silver, bronze sponsorship packages. They throw out thousands of these packages every month, ignoring them completely. In world two, I work with sponsorship seekers who love the gold, silver, bronze sponsorship package. All of their sponsorship strategies focus on making a sponsorship package that they can send to prospects in hopes that the right mix of assets, at the right price, will grab their prospects and make the sale. I don’t know how these two worlds can exist within the same sponsorship space, but they do. Something I hear often from sponsorship seekers is something like “If the gold, silver, bronze sponsorship package is so bad, why do THEY use it?”
The Five Reasons Your Sponsors Ignore Your E-mails
Email is a fabulous tool to help warm up cold calls…except when it isn’t! I hear from clients and colleagues all the time that their e-mails are not producing results. They send out 1,000 emails and hear nothing back. I have had excellent results using email to help open doors and I see truly horrible examples of email marketing every day. Let’s talk about why nobody is replying to your sponsorship sales emails. You Try to Make the Sale If you sell sponsorship for a living, you’ve had this dream – we all have: you write 10 emails, with sponsorship sales letters and sponsorship packages attached, get 10 responses, all yes with cash in hand. A nice dream…but a dream nonetheless! I can’t say this any clearer than this: You do not want to make the sale on the first call. Sponsorship is a process, not direct mail! If you do, you are leaving money on the table. Big time. What’s the goal of the first meeting? To get the second meeting. How do you get a first meeting? Phone call. How do you get a phone call? A well-written email (assuming no warm introduction, of course). A well written email […]
I Don’t Have Time to do Sponsorship “Properly”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YtU-ze1UUM I would say that “no time” is the number one reason and most common complaint that I hear from...
Things Sponsors Say: “We Don’t do Sponsorship”
We’ve all heard it from our prospects, that “we don’t do sponsorship anymore.” How can this be? Sponsorship spending is at an all-time high, is more nuanced than ever before and is more effective and measurable than at any point in the past. Sponsorship encompasses all disciplines within the marketing spectrum…and this brand simply doesn’t do it? What gives? Well, let me tell you what gives! Sponsorship is Broken…and it’s Our Fault When a company says that they don’t “do sponsorship,” what they really mean is that they don’t pay a made up sum of money in order to put a logo on some signs at an event with a poorly defined audience. So, when a prospect says that they don’t do sponsorship, what they are really telling you is that they no longer do bad sponsorship. In fact, for many sponsorship properties, “sponsorship” has become synonymous with this old-school approach. That is, an exchange of money for a handful of low value “sponsorship” opportunities like logo placements and signage. Given how many individuals still sell sponsorship using sponsorship packages, with outdated levels, made up values and little more than recognition on signage…it’s no wonder that brands “don’t do sponsorship”. […]
Five Reasons Your Sponsorship Proposal isn’t Working!
Sponsorship marketing is hard work! Nothing is more frustrating than spending countless hours crafting a sponsorship proposal, sending it out to your prospects and hearing…nothing in return. I see a lot of sponsorship proposals, good ones and bad ones (and some REALLY bad ones) but all of them suffer from one of these five issues, which are costing you money. Let’s dive in and see if we can make your sponsorship packages stronger and grow your sponsorship program!
How a Sponsorship Fulfillment Report Saved my Life
Full disclosure: a fulfillment report didn’t actually save my life! It did, however, save me from a horribly embarrassing situation, saved a sponsorship relationship and saved me a lot of pain. Negotiating the Custom Sponsorship Proposal Let me set the stage here: I was selling sponsorship for an event…a big event. Our target audience was a group of professionals who had a lot of money and who had very specific needs to be able to participate in their profession. In other words, they had a lot of money and they had to spend a lot of that money to do their job. From a sponsorship valuation standpoint, this opportunity was an absolute gold mine! I negotiated a sponsorship package with a new company looking to increase their professional services business and our audience was their target audience. Excellent! We went through all of the assets, picked out the ones that made sense to them, and I created a custom sponsorship proposal based on that feedback. Sponsorship Fact: Good Fulfillment Starts with Good Activation The day of the event came and we were sold out! All of our sponsor logos were where I said they would be, we said all of […]