Sponsorship Starts at Home

Well its that time of year again.  Holiday season sure, but its also that time that athletes should be talking to prospective sponsors for next season.  Though some sport specific companies will have probably already signed some of their athletes for next year, many "normal" or non-sport related businesses are just in the budget making process or will soon have next year's budget and funds to draw from.

The process of approaching sponsors in your sport is fairly straight forward.  For example, if you're a cyclist, you may have seen a brand's rep around, or you may have a good relationship with you local bike shop that can help open up that dialogue.  Some businesses like K-Swiss and CycleOps even have applications available online, or at least have an email address for sponsorship proposals.

Where things get a little murkier is with often overlooked local businesses.  Your immediate geographic community can often be an untapped market of potential sponsors so long as you know how to engage local businesses and properly represent yourself.  Without exception, every business in your area has a vested interest in developing or reinforcing positive attitudes towards their brand, which means that every business in your area represents an opportunity worth your consideration about approaching.

Can't make the connection and wondering why an oil company, or a dentist's office, or well, whatever, might take an interest in you and your sport?  I'll explain a few important pointers for pursuing these opportunities and then I think you'll start to see the draw.

Be a Presence in Your Community

As an athlete you have the ability to share your skills and energy with others in the community.  I honestly believe that its the social responsibility of athletes to share their gifts with others, an in turn, help bring their society up.  This could take the form of running a local run club, coaching a local amateur team, speaking to children about the power of sport and the benefits of an active lifestyle, or just good old fashioned donating your time at the local soup kitchen.

What this demonstrates to sponsors is that you're an individual ready and willing to be a positive contributor to your community, and in turn an ambassador of goodwill for the brands that are interested in you.  If you don't have the time or resources time to give back to your community, why should any local sponsor be willing to devote time and resources to supporting you?

Learn to Talk Share Your Accomplishments and Inspire Others to do the Same


Professional athletes are great at this.  Ever watch a hockey game and see a player talk about themselves and what a great game they had?  No, they deliver concise, easy to understand answers and are generally pretty down to earth about their achievements.  Amateur athletes on the other hand usually either go into technical details that simply fly over the head of the formerly interested counterparty, or they downplay the accomplishment because they simply don't really know what to say.

Don't shy away from your accomplishments, and when someone asks about your sport, use the opportunity to bring it back to them.  If you're an triathlete or marathoner, when someone inevitably says "I could never do that".  Let them know what they can.  Every triathlete either themselves is a story of overcoming adversity, or knows of an inspiring story like Sister Madonna, or Rick and Dicky Hoyt.  Share those stories, and let others know that sweetness of success in sport is most often a function of hard work and dedication.
Coming across as humble, grateful, and eager to share your sport will garner you the respect and admiration of others.  A likeable guy or gal who is successful in their sport is far more likely to catch the attention of local businesses than someone who is their own biggest fan.

Network, Network, Network


People who are successful in their sport often fall into the trap of only associating with others who are directly involved with their sport.  That can mean they only talk to other athletes, coaches, and prospective sponsors.  In a city like Calgary, and in most cities, for every business that has sponsored a race or athlete, there are dozens of businesses that haven't even considered the opportunities that sponsorship can provide.

Learn to get out of your comfort zone and whenever an opportunity arises to attend a silent auction, fundraiser, Christmas Party, Stampede Party, whatever, take the opportunity up.  Learn to network and make new connections with people you've never met before using local events that are completely unrelated to your sport, or sport at all.

Of course there is always the virtual world as well.  Media such as Twitter, and Facebook can help you engage and make connections with others that you normally wouldn't interact with.  What I'm saying is start following local business and your local movers and shakers that may not have anything at all to do with your sport.

Once the relationship is established, think of things that you can offer those businesses.  Lead a run club for a small oil and gas company, donate coaching sessions to silent auctions, help lead group rides for charity events like the Ride to Conquer Cancer or the MS Bike Tour.  Events like these are full of people with something to offer your if you have something you'd like to offer them.

If the idea of breaking the ice with someone you've never met before is a little unnerving, consider courses like the Dale Carnegie Course, or ToastMasters to help make new connections and build your public speaking confidence.

That sums it up


Thats all for now, as always, if you ever have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or tweet at me.  I'm happy to help.

Social Media and Personal Branding in Sports

It seems a few of my blog posts have received quite a bit of traffic, specifically those pertaining to amateur level sponsorship and personal branding. A lot of that traffic was spurred by a discussion on the Slowtwitch forums on that specific topic.

I just want to take this opportunity to underscore how great a role social media can play for amateur athletes looking for sponsorship dollars. I won't recap why branding is so important, or how to use social media here, for that I'd recommend you go back to my original posts. But I do want to point you to a really great case study for another athlete who has done awesome to build his brand even though he isn't winning gold medals (yet).

Kevin Jagger is a Canadian speedskater who recently gave up his job in Investment Banking to pursue some impressive goals in speedskating. He's done an excellent job of using social media to his advantage and built himself a great brand with many followers which in turn has benefited him by helping to attract sponsors. A couple months back on his blog he was gracious enough to write a fairly thorough account of how he's done all this and I'd highly recommend any and every amateur athlete looking for sponsorship to read through it.

I mentioned this in the slowtwitch forum that originally generated all this interest, but one of the biggest mistakes a lot of individuals looking for sponsorship make, is that they just go ask sponsors for sponsorship without really bringing anything to the table.

The key to being an attractive individual worth sponsoring is engaging the entire community of individuals who your potential sponsor needs to reach. In one way this means engaging your neighbourhood, your city, your university, to make yourself attractive to local businesses who are the most likely to first sponsor you as an amateur. The next step is to engage the online community of athletes within and beyond your geographic area. Sure this can mean tweeting at the champions, but more importantly it means talking to the masses of age group athletes that companies sell product to.

The best way to build those connections with other athletes both in the real world and online community is to place yourself in the conversation and develop a genuine interest in the training, and achievements of others. Ask others about their training, their goals, their next race. And likewise, feel free share your own experiences, good and bad. You'll be surprised at how many great connections you can make when you realize that the key to building a great brand isn't about talking about yourself, but building strong connections with others.

Recommended Reading:

http://www.longtracklongshot.com

Kevin Jagger's Post on Social Media

Branding, Sponsorship, and Sports- Part I: The Importance of a Brand

Branding, Sponsorship, and Sports- Part II: Know Your Audience

Branding, Sponsorship and Sports Part III: How to Use Social Media

Branding, Sponsorship, and Sports- Part II: Know Your Audience

The key to any good marketing campaign or well established brand is the ability to understand and know your audience. For an athlete of any skill level looking for sponsorship it is important to realize that you are the brand, and in your quest for sponsorship, the businesses you target are your audience. So ultimately, to earn that golden ticket of sports sponsorship, you need to have a strong appreciation for what drives the decision making process for businesses allocating marketing/sponsor dollars.

There are several key factors that advertisers and marketing managers use to determine whether an athlete(s) is/are a good fit for sponsorship. Here's a quick overview of them;

Communications objectives and fit- All businesses should have a specific objective for how marketing and communications dollars are spent (or they should anyways). These objectives may be as simple as establishing their presence in the community and building brand recognition, or more commonly trying to actively to drive sales. Its key that you give some thought to what their objective(s) may be and how you can appeal to that. Example; A new health food store opens up in your town, building a relationship with them may make sense for both parties. In exchange for logo placement on your jersey they may be able to provide you with nutrition, vitamins, supplements, etc.

Who is Your Target Market's Target Market?- Lets face it Viagra isn't going to sponsor you if you're a fertile young man in his 20's (or female for that matter). This is another thing you have to think about when you choose who you're going to approach for sponsorship, do you and your audience's target market have a natural fit? In the Viagra example perhaps not, but if a marketer recognizes that you're age group happens to be their exact target demographic, then thats one more point in the pros column for you. This is a no brainer if you look at any pro-triathlete's race kit, but sometimes at the local level you might have to look at other ways your brand appeal can work with a sponsor's, and matching demographics are one important way.

Personality- There are good personalities that you want to be spokespeople for your brand, and there are not so good personalities that have been spokespeople for brands. It goes without saying that a socially active individual in their community presents more opportunity for exposure than a recluse who doesn't know what Facebook is. So its important to have a sincere, positive, and high level of interaction with those in your real world and online community. Essentially, the way sponsors see it, the more people who like you, the more people who may have a receptive response towards their brand.

On the flip side of that coin, is how important it is to realize that the more exposure you and your brand develop, the more important it is that you reflect positively on your sponsors. The only reason Nike didn't dump Tiger Woods when he failed to keep it in his pants was because they had invested far too much in building his brand to simply write him off. Sure you won't ever be subject to the level of public scrutiny as Tiger is, but in a world where social media can make everyone a star in their own little corner, you have to be careful with how you represent yourself and your sponsors.

Your Track Record and Your Story- You don't have to win every race to get brand sponsorship, but results help. Consistent podiums even within your age group should start to turn some heads and will get you noticed even when the sponsorship application consists of an online form through a medium such as Promotive.com . But if you're a team of like minded individuals getting into the sport, or an age grouper with a story to tell, or just a dedicated and hard working triathlete, that counts for something too. The Team in Training athletes rarely win races (sorry guys), but they've got Nike, Powerbar, and Runner's Mag as some of their top sponsors. What is key here is that something sets you aside, it can be race results, it can be a story of overcoming individual adversity, or it can be the fact that you've motivated 50 people in your community to race their first tri, but its got to be something and its got to be good.

Return on Investment- What you ask a sponsor to invest is going to have a lot of weight on whether or not you're going to receive a sponsorship. If you go ask your local bike shop for $10 000 cash to fund your travel expenses to the Abu Dabi tri as an AGer, they'll tell you to get lost because its $10 000 invested that won't turn into a single sale. CycleOps provides introductory levels of sponsorship through discounts on merchandise, which works for them because they forgo a little margin on product in return for guaranteed sales, and marketable individuals using their brand.

What works best is that you find opportunities for sponsors to help you through in-kind contributions. For instance, all triathletes need nutrition, shoes, clothes, bikes, hotel rooms, travel to races, etc, and these are all things that sponsors are more forthcoming with than cash outright. On the other hand if its cash that you need for coaching, etc, build a relationship with your local businesses and eventually present them with your sponsorship proposal with differing levels of commitment, and they may be willing to work with you on that basis.

Think about these key things before you approach sponsors, and with them in mind cater your proposal and approach to your target audience. Do that, and you'll be well on your way to standing out from the masses.

Stay tuned for my next blog in the series on Branding, Sponsorship, and Sports.