by Kristin Swartzlander | Mar 31, 2016 | Racing Sponsorship
Sponsorship, in particular finding marketing partners, is one of the most popular topics on this blog and with my coaching clients, so it’s only natural that I get questions on that process frequently. Today, I’d like to talk about the sponsorship outreach process, and the questions that I get on that, including some variation of: How many emails do I need to send to get a sponsor? I’ve sent emails and haven’t gotten a response. What do I do? Should I follow-up from those I haven’t heard back from? These are great questions. I’m all about actually taking action, and all of these questions imply that you’re already doing that. My hat is off to you. Unfortunately for anyone who doesn’t share my love of calculus, I’m going to answer this question with math. #NotSorry If you have a goal, whether that’s a dollar amount you need to reach or a number of partners you’d like to work with, that’s obviously the number you want to work backwards from, whether that’s in initial outreach (Question #1) or follow-up (Questions #2 and #3). For this exercise, let’s assume it’s one. Yep, just one, fantastic, voracious, enthusiastic partner that you can knock it out of the park for. Who will tell all of their business friends about. And love you forever. (Doesn’t sound bad, does it?) So, the real question is: how do you get to that one? Conversion Rates In order to get to your one, you have to understand the concept of conversion rates. A conversion rate is the percentage of actions taken on an offer or another action. For example, if 10...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Mar 18, 2016 | Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Sponsorship
Pitching. It’s an arduous and repetitive process, whether you’re throwing fastballs, trying to communicate the value of an offering to a potential partner, conveying a story to the media or the like. I see a lot of these pitches, whether I’m reviewing them for clients or sending them out myself on behalf of our race team, one of our events or a client. But I’m always intrigued when a pitch finds it’s way into MY inbox. So, not exactly for fun but for learning experience, I thought we could review two pitches I got recently and tell you why I didn’t take the person up on their, ahem, ‘offer’. I’ve blacked out any details that might incriminate or identify the guilty. Unsuccessful Pitch #1: Yep, that’s it. You can probably spot the some of the problems with this pitch straight off the bat, but let me list them out for you: Used a contact form when my email is all over this website. This makes it difficult for a person to just hit reply – they have to copy and paste your email into their email service provider just to reply to your pitch. No. Didn’t use my name, even though it is also all over the website. Didn’t sign their name. Just a courtesy. Didn’t give me any information about his team and why I would be interested in sponsoring it. Didn’t provide any information about what kind of value I would receive in the relationship. Basically, this pitch said, “Hey person, I want to talk to you about giving me money. And I’m putting the burden of finding out why on you. Copy...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Jan 15, 2016 | Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Sponsorship
Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a ‘business of sports’ talk with the EVP of Marketing at the Pittsburgh Pirates, Drew Cloud, and take a private tour of PNC Park. It took me back quite a bit to my days at the San Francisco 49ers, and the level at which professional sports organizations like them operate. I had a ton of takeaways that I feel can be applied to the racing industry. My favorite, by the way, is the philosophy that this blog is based around: look outside of your own industry for best practices and great ideas. Read: if you’re only paying attention to what the track down the road is doing, you’re missing the boat. One thing that really stuck out to me was how they treat their season ticket holders, or, I should say, their ‘members’. Season tickets are the Pirates biggest revenue driver, and they offer season ticket packages for as few as six games and as many as the full 81-home-game season. And they view their ticket holders as ‘members’ of an exclusive club instead of money-saving fans. In my experience, season tickets are one of the most underutilized and/or confusing promotions that tracks generally butcher. Very few have enough information available to potential customers for them to make a purchasing decision. Tracks struggle to structure the price and flexibility (some even sell them at face value, with no rain date provisions), have difficulty getting the word out about the cost savings, or are in a market that generally doesn’t want to commit to a block of time. The Pirates have to deal with some of...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Jan 7, 2016 | Racing Sponsorship
Of the questions that I get asked regarding racing sponsorship and helping racers, events and tracks clinch the right marketing deals, I would say that the vast majority are about, or swing back to, the almighty racing sponsorship proposal. I get questions on the number of pages, categorizing by levels, whether to include pricing or not, how many photos to use…the list goes on (and on). But one thing that my smartest coaching clients ask me is, I believe, one of the most critical questions about sponsorship proposals: Where does my sponsorship proposal fit in the sales cycle? It’s not that those questions aren’t important. They certainly are. But what’s more important to understand is that your marketing proposal isn’t what sells sponsorship. Just because the proposal is the item that you (almost always) have push across the table (or internet) to seal the deal, it’s not actually what makes the deal. You’re what makes the deal. And knowing how the racing sponsorship proposal fits into that process of presenting you is just as critical as knowing what to put in it. So what does the Sponsorship Sales Cycle look like? I can honestly say that it’s different for every person, but I’ll tell you what I suggest and in what order: Identify what’s sellable in your program. Take inventory of the assets you can offer – tangible and intangible. Have a great social media presence? Own a truck and trailer you can have lettered? Know a high-end videographer who can produce great footage for a partner? These are all sellable assets that you can include in your racing sponsorship proposal. Build a portfolio of...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Dec 31, 2015 | Media and Public Relations, Mindset, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media, Racing Sponsorship
As we close out 2015 this week, I encourage you to take some time to reflect on the past year. We all experience successes and failures in life, work, and racing, and I’m no different. Last week, I shared the powerful impact of 2015, both on me and on the community, and how grateful I am for the progress we’re making. You can read that here. Today and tomorrow, I’ll be in the office attempting to close out 2015 and plan 2016. (I’m only three months late on my October ‘2016 Planning’ target. If you’re behind, you are not alone!) We have a lot of fun things in the works for next year that I hope to announce in January and February, but we do have one coming up SOON: Sponsorship Marketing Workshop: Crafting Effective Sponsorship Proposals – Live on Sunday, January 10th. On-Demand Forever. Details Here. We had a great response to the first sponsorship marketing workshop on crafting and value the perfect offerings (you can get the on-demand version here if you missed the live event), so I’m adding more workshops just like it to the calendar. This is something that I’ve always thought could bring value to the community with a lower price point than private coaching, so I’m excited to share that we’re planning on releasing at least one workshop per month going forward in 2016. More details on that later, but if you want to weigh in on the topics and content, please feel free to share your thoughts with me here. Some of you are new to this blog (sign up for the free newsletter if so!),...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Dec 17, 2015 | Mindset, Racing Sponsorship
It’s selling season, in case you haven’t noticed by the glut of marketing materials, the number of trade shows and expos, and the amount of time you and I are spending thinking about how to make our businesses and race teams work in 2016. And my email box reflects that, too. The questions I’m getting most right now are about selling – creating offerings, making an effective sponsorship proposal, targeting customers and potential marketing partners, pitching, and the mindset and all of the tactics that go into the many things we need to know to be able to sell. One thing I wanted to address today are two principles we touched on in my most recent on-demand workshop on creating the perfect sponsorship offerings: knowing who your customer is, and, knowing what you’re selling. Gone are the days when we can create a product that we think is fantastic and then go out and find someone to buy it. Discretionary income is not the same as it used to be -even if we have extra money for something we didn’t know we needed prior to you showing up to sell it to us, we now need to see return on investment for that extra money. And we need you to prove it to us, whether we’re a consumer or a business. And how will you do that if you don’t know who we are? So why do we still sell sponsorship and marketing that way? “Here is the great thing I have, and here is why you need it.” – Doesn’t work anymore. The more effective sales strategy today is a...
Connect!