Non-profit organizations,  sporting clubs, or sometimes enterprises will all benefit from getting financial backing from a sponsor. But, How exactly is sponsorship attracted?

When we talk about sponsorship, usually sports come in to mind. Let’s take a look at motorsports. Money is the number one driver for any motorsport. Getting into a great team is quite easy, provided that you can rake in an amount of about fifty thousand to eighty thousand dollars for the season. Unless you have this money on-hand, it means that in order to participate in a competition,  you would need to get financial backing from as sponsor.

Challenge is, getting a sponsorship isn’t quite a walk in the park; especially with today’s economic environment. Nevertheless, getting sponsorships are still quite feasible; and possible whether it’s for sport clubs, new businesses, or the like. I’d like to share with you some tips on how to get you those sponsors.

Being Proactive and Persistent

If this is your first time to consider getting a sponsorship, then most probably you’ll find it quite hard to approach. Let me share a motorsport analogy with you. Let’s say a car driver is a no-show on the starting grid during race day. This means that a race win will never come, no matter what happens.  The same thing goes for garnering sponsorships. If you’re not offering any proposals, then might as well forget any deals. In short, being proactive and persistent is the key to obtaining sponsorships.

Another important thing to consider is that getting sponsorships will always be a numbers game. You will always have the odds of closing a deal stacked against you. You will get lots and lots of rejections, but this is expected. What you can do on your end is to make sure that your success rate goes higher.

Return of Investment

Of course, similar to any other deal, your sponsors will expect something in return. In order to clearly present the return of your partner’s investment, you would need to present very clear plans on how to deliver value-add to your partner’s business. These strategies then become your proposal’s focus for appeal.

You can also consider some factors in coming up with those value-add plans. First consideration is that you always need to have tangible value-add to a partner’s business. You need to explicitly show that your partnership will bring certain benefits to both parties. Next, you can personalize your value-add plans to address the partner’s concerns like increase in customers, brand recognition, or increased sales.

Another consideration that you need to take note of is that can your team actually deliver the partner’s requirements? If you can deliver all the promises, make sure that you have detailed plans on how you’re going to achieve those goals.

Another important part of presenting the benefits of a partnership with a potential sponsor is to present a realistic return of investment to the partner. Very vague and general statements like generate more sales, attract more customers, or increase your margin won’t do.  You need to answer how you’re going to help them attain their goals as their partner.

Lastly, you would also need to consider evaluating the success of the sponsorship opportunity. In presenting your proposal, make sure to indicate what key metrics you will be using to measure the success of the partnership. These can be in different forms like website traffic, online sales, or in-arena sales, etc.

Always keep your promises

Most importantly, when engaging in sponsorship deals, always make sure that you keep your end of the deal. Not doing so would not only affect your integrity, but also will make you lose that sponsorship you worked so hard for. Not only that, since there was a bad experience conducting business with you, potential and future sponsorships with other providers might not even materialize.