Best Practices for Sponsor Prospecting
Many sponsorship sellers don’t know where to start when they are trying to find brands that would be interested in sponsoring their property. As a senior consultant with 25+ years of experience advising both rightsholders and brands, I’ve learned a few “tricks” and best practices I would like to pass along:
Talk To Other Properties
One of the best ways to get information on the most active sponsors in your market is to ask other properties in your market. For example, let’s say your property is a music festival based in Cleveland. You can start by finding contacts at other music-related properties in Cleveland (the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame comes to mind, along with other music festivals, concert venues, etc.). You can also talk to sports properties, cultural attractions, nonprofit organizations and other types of properties outside of the music category. Ask them which companies and brand categories they’ve had the most success with. I’ve found that sponsorship sellers are usually willing to help each other out.
In addition, you can talk to properties in your category in other markets. Carrying on with the Cleveland music festival example, the sponsorship salesperson can talk to sponsorship sellers at music festivals in other Midwestern markets and then extend that to similar-sized markets in other regions. If you don’t already have contacts at these properties, you can find them by searching LinkedIn or the sponsorship section of each property’s website or use one of the third-party resources mentioned below.
Get The Most Out of Good Old Google Searches
Another way to get good information about which types of companies are sponsoring properties that are similar to yours is to simply Google it. For example, if your property is a marathon in Seattle, you can Google “Portland Marathon Sponsors” to see which companies are sponsoring marathons in nearby markets. I would recommend creating a spreadsheet of all the sponsors you find so you can start to identify which brand categories and which specific brands are the most active in sponsoring your property type (e.g., marathons).
Use Third-Party Resources
There are several companies that specialize in creating resources for sponsorship sellers (and also buyers). One of my favorites is SponsorPitch (https://sponsorpitch.com ). It allows you to search thousands of sponsors, properties and sponsorship deals. There is also contact information for people involved with sponsorship at most properties and sponsors. I used SponsorPitch recently when I was doing some brand targeting research for one of my clients, a museum. I was able to search museums across the US (and even internationally) to find hundreds of examples of sponsors at other museums. I was quickly able to see which sponsorship categories and specific brands were the most active in sponsoring museums. SponsorPitch offers a free plan that allows basic searches and paid plans that provide a lot more features (e.g., custom filtered searches, the ability to add your own sales pitch and search others, sponsorship deal analytics).
Another good resource is SponsorUnited (https://www.sponsorunited.com/). The platform includes a lot of details on sponsorship deals including assets and deal structure, marketing/sponsorship activation campaigns, social media metrics, and best practices. A subscription to SponsorUnited is quite a bit more expensive than SponsorPitch, but could be worth it for organizations that have dedicated resources and experienced sponsorship salespeople.
If you implement these best practices, you’ll find lots of new sponsor prospects in no time!
Questions or comments? You can reach me at mark@visionmarkconsulting.com