So here we are, part two of my mini series about sponsorship. Yesterday I spoke about making contact with potential sponsors. If you haven't read yesterday's post, and you would like to, then you can find it here:
Part 1 - Making Contact
If you want to skip ahead then the next post in the series can be found here:
Part 3 - What to expect/What is expected
Today the topic is what do you say once you have made contact. How do you sell yourself?
Sell yourself? Doesn't that sound a little commercial and a little mercenary? It sure does. Now is a probably a good time to discuss this since it is quite fundamental to how you approach sponsors. When it comes to convincing sponsors to support you, you need to approach it like a business deal (because it is one). There are some companies out there that support athletes for the general improvement of the sport etc, but most of them do it to increase their sales. Sponsorship is generally viewed as a form of advertising. If a company can get better bang for their buck down an alternative advertising route, then they will. If you want them to spend their money and effort on you, you have to make it worth their while. They aren't going to give you something for nothing. Once you understand that, then the rest is pretty much common sense.
So following on from the above, the stuff in today's blog has been said before by countless others, as I said, it is common sense. I am not unearthing any nuggets here, but hopefully some people will find some of it useful.
Okay, you have made contact with a sponsor, now what? You need to convince whatever company you have contacted that you will be able to promote their company effectively. How you do this will depend a bit on how you have made contact, but essentially you need to put forward the business case. You need to demonstrate that by supporting you, you will be able to promote them effectively. Tell them what you can do for them.
How do you demonstrate your ability to promote them? Well there are lots of ways and you probably need to utilise a few of them.
I am sorry to say that racing well is just a small part of it, and in fact, if you do other stuff well then racing well isn't even necessary. Racing well is great, and certainly draws attention to you, but unless you race well enough to regularly feature online and in magazines, then that attention is probably just limited to people at the race course. Not a particularly wide audience.
An obvious way to promote companies is Social Media. Companies have been realising over the last few years just how powerful it can be to have 'normal people' market their goods for them. That is why there are now people who have careers putting pictures up on Instagram. However, Social Media isn't the be and end all of promotion. These days I would say that being active on Social Media is more of a pre-requisite than a differentiator. By this I mean that companies expect it, so it is not necessarily something you can sell yourself on. Unless of course you are a Social Media uber user with a broad following. In that case, companies love people like you.
Additionally, with Social Media there is a real risk of over saturation. If you are like me, then your Facebook feed is probably full of triathletes (including myself) #hash-tagging and shouting out various companies and that can just get plain annoying. So if you are going to use Social Media as your main method of promotion, then you need to be good at it. By this I mean post regularly, be interesting, be engaging etc. There are people who use Social Media really well (Stef Hanson of Witsup is a good example), but there are lots more who don't. I personally wish I was better at using it, but I struggle. Social Media is a great tool, but by itself it may not be enough.
Community engagement is awesome. If you can demonstrate that you are involved in the sporting community then that is a great avenue for promotion. Perhaps you are a coach, perhaps you are a mentor, perhaps you run a club. All things that companies love to support. In the end you have a demonstrable influence on other athletes and that is what they are after.
What else can you do? Well you tell me... Think outside the box, be creative. The key is that you are able to offer a viable method of promotion. Whatever your method is for getting a company's message out there, the fact that you can get it out there is what is important. This is what you need to sell to a potential sponsor.
In fact, my understanding is that companies are increasingly looking at how well you can promote their product as opposed to how good you are at racing. Giving shoes to a middle of the pack age grouper who has a broad following on Social Media is going to give a company a much broader reach than they would get by giving the same shoes to a professional triathlete who does nothing but run in them. Age Group athletes typically expect less from a sponsor too. In fact there is growing scepticism in the industry as to how effective sponsoring professional triathletes is as a form of advertising.
That isn't to say that companies are no longer looking to sponsor professional triathletes, but rather that athletes can no longer expect to attract sponsors by simply being fast. An athlete has be able to offer more than that.
In my correspondence to potential sponsors I spend a bit of time introducing myself and a bit of time on previous results. But the bulk of my communication is on the above stuff. Why I am a good match for their company, what I can offer, what I can bring them, why I am worth supporting. As always I try and keep it professional and polite. Remember, this is business.
If all this sounds like a bit of work, then you are right. All this promotion takes time and effort, but that is what it takes. If you have just won your age group at the recent 70.3 and you are now expecting companies to roll up to your door with boxes of freebies, then you could be waiting for a while. You need to work for it. You don't get something for nothing.
So I think that is it for selling yourself. Tomorrow's post will be a bit about what you can expect from sponsors, but also, what sponsors will expect from you and how you should approach your obligations.
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