Monetize Your Site With Sponsorship Deals

Have you thought about getting a sponsor or co-branding partner to help promote your product or service, and earn a few bucks while you're at it? The big guys do it alllll the time. I was watching the show GossipGirl tonight and checked out their website. They have deals with Sunsilk, Verizon, Old Navy, Second Life, Vogue and Rolling Stones magazines.

With tons of new sites and blogs being created by the nanosecond, getting a sponsor may be a one way to monetize your "digital assets". Even if you already sell your own products and services on your website, having an established brand buy ad space will give you more credibility. And yes, you can get Google AdSense pretty easily but unless you have humongous traffic, it won't pay. Cutting a deal directly with an advertiser can be much more lucrative. Think you don't have enough page views? Think again. One thousand unique visitors may not sound like much but there may be advertisers out there that are interested in even that small number of "eyeballs".

This is a topic I'm very interested in so I attended a workshop recently at the NY Women's Chamber of Commerce on how to get sponsors and brought back a few good tips:

There are two types of sponsorships:
1- grants from foundations or city, state and federal agencies, and
2-corporate money

Of the two, corporate dollars are easier to get a hold of. Start by inquiring at your target company's community relations division or their public relations office. If they don't have such a thing then keep asking until you get to the right person. And you don't have to stray too far away from your "hood" - look for businesses near you. For an event I was organizing last week I went after The Container Store located a few blocks away from my venue. Unfortunately they never got back to me, but now I know where to go and I'll try them again for another event in the future.

Sponsors have deadlines and they usually run out of money by June, some, like American Express Open, even as early as April. You'll be competing with others for the same sponsorship dollars so start early in the year. Build a relationship - invite them to your functions, take them out to lunch, send them information about what you do, take pictures of the event and send them copies. Keep them involved in the process. Find ways to always be on their mind. Research and see what kind of events they like to sponsor. For example, banks are now big on financial literacy.

Pick sponsors that fit in with your business. The closer you are aligned with their goals, the better chance you'll have of hooking up with them. Tell them about the demographics of the people attending your event or visiting your website. How many people do you expect at your event? How much traffic do you get? These are things they'll want to know.

Give them different sponsorship levels to choose from, and tell them specifically what they'll get. Like the "Gold Sponsor" will get their logo on your fliers and website, but a "Platinum Sponsor" will get that plus time to do a presentation, or be introduced to the audience, and will allow them to distribute marketing materials at their own table.

Corporations also have foundations (it's a tax break for them) for specific causes they sponsor. Foundations only give grants but they're very easy to apply to.

Set up advisory boards and court people that work in organizations you'd like to get money from. Another idea is to attach yourself to a non-profit organization and ask them to be a partner of your event (think of all the companies that have the pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness!). Corporations like it when you do this. It's like a "Good Housekeeping seal of approval".

It's like you have to think of yourself as the head of a media business, and do what they do to make money.

Do you have any good/bad experiences with sponsors? Please share!

Would $50,000 be enough to get you started?

How does $50,000 sound to get you off the ground? That's what Mirassou Winery is offering women entrepreneurs if their business plan wins the "Make Your Dreams Come True" contest they're sponsoring. That could buy all the things on my wish list: laptop, printer, virtual assistant, personal masseuse (just kidding, unfortunately)...plus much more. The trick is you have to submit a rockin' business plan by December 15th, so that was incentive enough to get me (and a handful of the Mogulettes!) to sign up to Baruch College's 4-week Bootcamp on how to write them.

Elissa Grossman (that's her in the blue jacket next to yours truly) teaches courses on business management for college students that typically span a whole semester but she's doing an abbreviated version for entrepreneurs, starting with the elements of a business plan, which she covered in the first session, along with great examples of what an executive smmary should and shouldn't look like.

The second class was focused on the marketing plan, which is all about information gathering - where to get data about your target market, what the benefits and limitations are to different types of research, how to conduct surveys (one place to try out is surveymonkey.com, where you get the first 10 questions in a survey free), how to scope out your competition. Then she moved on to narrowing down your target market and selecting a marketing mix to reach them.

The third class centered around money - how much you need vs how much you want. This part was cool - Elissa recommends shutting your eyes and imagining the process that's involved in making a sale. Then make an outline of that in order to come up with a list of costs, like how much will the virtual assistant cost, plus the web developer, plus the computer, the desk and the chair, the masseuse (no...just kidding again) and so on, for each task. How much will be variable, or fixed? All this will help in coming up with a price for your goods and services. But that's not all that determines price - there's the perceived value (you can charge a premium for goods that are new in the market, or are complex, or where price comparisons are difficult). Competition also plays a role, as does strategy, like special pricing promotions that you might do.

The second half of the class was about sales forecasting and breakeven analysis, which I won't even attempt to summarize. But she made it interesting by giving lots of real life examples of how companies used these numbers to make adjustments and run their operations more efficiently.

BTW, Elissa's available if you'd like feedback on your business plan, as are other counselors on staff at Baruch's Field Center. These services are offered for free.

So, sharpen up your pencils and put your fabulous ideas on paper...you could win 50,000 big ones! Like they say: you gotta be in it to win it...

Next week I'll be away on a short vacation to Paris, yes, the "city of lights"! My friend invited me to stay with her and I'm using my miles to get there, so it's a great deal. Stay tuned for my report on how the French do business - I expect to be doing heavy duty research into their chocolate industry. Au revoir!