EVERYONE!
They are the sole life force of a race directors budget when determining how much money can be budgeted to cool premiums, free beer, and possibly free photos!
The good news is that thanks to company branding, you’re able to sell companies your sponsorship opportunities based on the audience reach you can give them. Whether that be by making a B2B deal with the beer distributor, or by selling the title of the race to the highest bidder, it’s imperative that you capture their attention with collected analytics, proven stats, and the “reputational” worth of sponsoring a race.
If it’s your first time looking for a sponsor, it’s pretty standard to think that just telling them your participants will see their logo is a good enough reason to fork over the cash, but you have SO MUCH MORE TO OFFER.
Do you have an Instagram? Facebook? Twitter? Who follows you on there? What is your audience demographic? If you have these platforms, you can pull demographic reports to find out these stats. When you have a marketing agency at your side, like Big Run Media (*wink*), we pour over the reporting for you, analyze our findings, and provide you with all the essential information you can use to sweeten your sponsorship pitch.
So what are the vital stats?
Gender, age, time of highest engagement, location, etc. With data like this, you can show real value to your prospect. Let them know that when sponsoring your event, they won’t just have a spot on the t-shirts and finish line…
(For Example) A Women’s Running Store is your proposed sponsor. By sponsoring your race, they will have the typical logo placement on your site, t-shirts, and signage, but they’ll ALSO be able to reach the *thousands of followers and “lookalike” audiences you have across all social platforms; an audience they were previously unable to reach affordably. So let’s say your audience is 67% female and through reporting you know that 84% of them are engaged in the morning hours –the perfect time to do a sponsored post to promote the stores products and services. But that’s not all.
On Facebook, you can create a test campaign to see how many of your followers/website visitors also have an interest in “Women’s Running.” Let’s say that in creating this test, you find that half of your following falls into that category. Now you can pitch your prospect about running an ad that targets an audience already interested in what their store offers, and at the time that the audience is most available for engagement. In addition to this, you can also promote them via organic social by using a CTA of “Follow / Like / Shop the Women’s Running Store for deals on shoes, race essentials, and all your training needs!” The possibilities are endless; you just have to optimize your imagination enough to make it as enticing to sponsors as it is to you.
Remember, your audience has marketing value. The more you grow the community around your product or event, the more valuable your audience is to organizations that provide services relevant to your market.
We know it can be overwhelming and maybe a little daunting, so if you’d rather leave the marketing to an endurance-sports-specific marketing team, go ahead and reach out to us at info@bigrunmedia.com.
