Sponsorship

[Janice]

Just looking for advice on how I can get sponsorship this year

[ice/solo racer]

First find a way to get the solo series into the mainstream motorsports scene than win a couple of championships,after that beg and beg for a few bucks to pay for the entry fee for an event.
That about sums it up,good luck getting anybody to help if you run solo,0 exposure is well 0 exposure.I've been fortunate over the years to get help from a few places,canspeed.com(orilla) and rocky island tire(bracebridge)have been a huge help.
The car should be photogenic,winning isn't always needed but it goes a long way to convincing sponsers that your serious about your sport.

[Taylor]

Wired Motorsports (me) has considered the plight(sp?) of the Amateur competitor and has implemented a couple tools and have planned a couple more tools/measures that could help competitors attract and maintain sponsorship. But it's less than traditional when you think of motorsports based exposure.

No one really comes to watch Solo 1 and Solo 2. More for Solo 2 of course, but it's still peanuts when you look at something like R.A.C.E. (regional racing).

Wired has the driver profile section which allows drivers to post their vitals, personally and vehiculary... another option is to allow "members" to offer space for their Sponsors logos and such.

The other option is for those members to have rotating banner ads in the site. While I know internet advertising (in it's most common form) isn't exactly producing staggering results, if you find a sponsor in a business relating to motorsport, you can offer them DIRECT attention to people who would buy their products.

Also if you look at the 2002 sponsorship package for Wired Racing at - www.wiredmotorsports.com/marketing - you can see the template for a business card sized CD-ROM presentation you could hand out to prospective sponsors. This sort of presentation would put you at a level that even professional teams don't seem to have. That said, I did however build the original template and structure for a Professional Formula Racing team! They used it to pass out to their prospective sponsors.

Also on the profile the driver can update their results as well as add news, so their sponsors could have constant contact with their driver.

Of course we'd be more than willing to post technical articles where a sponsors product is used, or where a fair comparison of products such sponsor may carry and then they're suggested as a place to buy such products.

Though I haven't looked at the stats in the past few months (Winter is obviously slow for this sort of thing) we were averaging 4500 Unique visitors per month to the site. Some news articles are read a couple hundred times. And often some contain video footage of drivers and therefore could contain additional exposure for your sponsor.

Anyhow these are just some of the ways Wired Motorsports can help and some of the tools that are in place now (many for free) to aid such an effort.

I'll let you know how the presentation works when I use it in the next couple months to try to secure some sponsorship for myself. 2002's was never handed out. Always too busy with something else.

One last thing to say... Rogers Television (local mind you but it's better than nothing) have been out to ProSlalom events in the last two years (and apparently most every year before that as well). The events are attended usually by a couple hundred specators and then whatever the televised audience would be. I don't even think Regional Racing gets that kind of coverage!

Another thing you could do is if you were to get a dealership or some other kind of business tying to motorsports involved, if you have the smarts/knowledge you could offer to host a monthly presentation on the sport. I know people who have done it for dealerships.

Value adding to your sponsorship.

Obviously winning championships is nice and should help but I would expect if you have a professional approach to the whole thing and know and outline exactly what you can offer that sponsor, instead of "gimmie some money and I'll throw some stickers on my car" you no doubt increase your chances.

There are guys like Wes who run their own site, to help promote a professional attitude towards the whole thing, keeping their sponsors in the mix as to what's going on. Anyone considering sponsoring someone would be pleased or impressed with this sort of method of communication. I've tried to put as much of that level of communication as I can (within reason) into the driver profile section since it's not feasible for most people to host their own website, learn HTML, etc..etc... Anyhow, my point being, the more you can offer them the better.

Also something I'll be doing this season is people who contribute approved articles and such to Wired this year will have links to their driver profile and such (probably a list of title sponsors in the hyperlink) referenced in the article. There's more but there are still decisions to be made and deadlines to meet.

So there are some thoughts and/or options...

[tanney]

The biggest thing with sponsorship isn't getting the sponsors. That's the easy part. Put together a professional, well thought out advertising/promotional brochure and research your potential sponsors to see EXACTLY what you can offer them.

The biggest thing is KEEPING the sponsors. Keeping your sponsors up to date as to the teams activities and achievements and show them the benefits of sponsorship, specifically the benefits of sponsoring YOU. Most people get sponsorship money and the team think that now they have money all is good.

Sponsors, no matter what buisness they are in, want to know that giving you their money is benefing them, not you.

It helps to have a class title or championship under your belt (you probably notice that the most successful drivers have the most and biggest sponsors), but not necessary.

It also helps if you know someone who owns or is reponsible for marketing in a company and you know is aq motorsport fan or car buff, to get your start. It's easy to sell something to someone you know, as apposed to cold calls to companies you don't know.

I hope this helps some!

[Logan]

Very interesting thread.
I thought I should give it a bump back into the spotlight as sponsorship has crossed my mind a few times and thought it may cross other minds as well.

[JoeT]

Yeah,

How do you get sponsors?

[Marsh]

Actually I've had a lot of trouble finding sponsors, even with 3 consectuvie class championships and a regional title. I get a lot of people that are interested, but when I send the a sponsorship package they say no thanks. It's actually a lot like my job hunting . The only place I've ever had interest in sponsorship was King of the Hill, but now that I'm not winning they backed out.

[JoeT]

Actually Sponsorship is not that hard to get, it's all standard business.

The proposal has to be clear and concise, and attitude has a big part to do with developing the right proposal for the prospective sponsor.

Essentially, what you are doing when asking for sponsorship is competing for their "Advertizing dollars". Keep in mind and iterate in your proposal:

Your History
How much you are asking for
What you will do for their company (Benefits) for that money
How it's going to be measured

Unless you are really lucky, no one readily hands off money unless there is some sort of ROI. The trick is finding out what the pain points are so that a proposal can be written to address these points.

Then it has to be presented, decisiveness is important...

It's effective, it works, and it's proven.

Note: Winning, class championship points, nor ranking in the the series does not play a big part in GRM type of motorsports sponsorship, it's all in how it's presented, and how you propose to get some measureable ROI for your prospective sponsor.

Hope this helps.