Hi, I'm Kim Skilden-Reed from Power Sponsorship, and this is Sponsorship Proposal Basics in about 15 minutes. This is a short, sharp guide to putting together a best practice sponsorship proposal. And because it is so short, I've put some extra resources in the description of this video. Now, before we start talking about the structure of a sponsorship proposal, we need to talk about the actual role of a sponsorship proposal, because it's probably not what you think it is. The number one job of a sponsorship proposal is not to sell to your contact within a company.
The number one job of a sponsorship proposal is to help that contact sell it internally so that they get all the yeses that they need in order to say yes to you. Okay, so we're going to talk about a number of the ways that sponsorship proposals really get it wrong. And the first, most common, is that they're very self-centered. These are the proposals that are all about you, your need, your prestige, your marketing sexiness, etc., etc., for page after page after page.
You'd be lucky to even mention the sponsor in there once, much less address their needs. A sponsorship proposal like this signals loud and clear to the sponsor that you either don't understand, or don't care about what they need for their brand. And that's not good.
That's a terrible way to start a relationship, and they're never going to say yes to you. Another way that sponsorship proposals get it wrong is that they don't establish the fit and relevance for the sponsor. They don't actually say, this is why we're coming to you.
This is why we think this is a great match. They make the sponsor do all the work. You know, and when sponsors get thousands of proposals every month, And, you know, even small sponsors are getting hundreds of sponsorship proposals a month. They've got so much to choose from. Why would they go with somebody that isn't establishing that fit and relevance for them?
Instead, they'll spend like 30 seconds checking it out. And if you haven't done that, they're just going to give it the flick and send you one of those all our funds are currently committed letters, which, by the way, is always a lie. Always.
Another way that sponsorship proposals get it wrong is that they only offer hygiene benefits. And this is so common, it's actually kind of depressing. Now, hygiene benefits are benefits that every single sponsorship seeker offers, whether they're teams or museums or professional associations or whatever.
They all offer logos on things, tickets to things, some kind of hospitality. and some kind of an official designation and maybe some kind of a spot on site like a tent at a festival or a table at a conference. This shows absolutely no creativity and also even worse, it commoditizes you. If everybody is selling the same thing it just becomes a numbers game and it's not a game you're going to win. Instead you need to find what you can offer and what is beautiful about what you have for a sponsor and concentrate on that.
Another big failing of a lot of sponsorship proposals is that they don't make a complete business case. They're all flash and no substance. Now listen to me when I'm telling you this.
I get that it's easy to make a proposal look really pretty on PowerPoint, but PowerPoint doesn't actually give you the space to create enough detail so they can sell it internally and they can say yes to you. So sure, go ahead and use a PowerPoint presentation if you're doing a... stand-up presentation to them. But if you are actually going to be leaving them something behind, which you need to so they can sell it internally, then it needs to be something more substantial and more complete and more detailed than a PowerPoint presentation can be. And finally, most sponsorship proposals are really poorly structured.
They're confusing to read. They're full of extraneous information like, you know, board profiles and, you know, piles of clippings from last year's event or whatever, but they don't include the right information that a sponsor needs to make a decision. Now what a sponsorship proposal should do is follow a nice clean story arc, which leads me to how to put together a good sponsorship proposal.
The first part of a best practice sponsorship proposal is about setting the stage and the first page that does that is obviously your title page. You want to keep it professional, definitely put it on letterhead. You could have it graphically designed if you wanted to, but that is absolutely optional. Now, if you are selling naming rights sponsorship or title sponsorship, which is the same thing, definitely put the sponsor's name into the title of your event or whatever it is you're selling sponsorship of.
Just as if they were already the naming rights sponsor. Same thing if they're the presenting sponsor. So it would be the so-and-so festival presented by sponsor.
Now here's a big tip. And really listen to me when I tell you this. Do not use their logo.
Don't use it on the title page. And don't use it anywhere else in the presentation. So why? Because number one, you don't have permission to use it. This is valuable intellectual property.
And you don't have... permission to use it. Sponsors hate that. It shows real disrespect for their brand. So don't use it because of that.
Also, you always use it wrong. You take a low res, you know, version of the logo that is somewhere online or somewhere on their Facebook page. And it's oftentimes been, you know, created specifically for that use.
And then you just drop it onto the page. Number one, it looks terrible. And number two, You're not using it based on their guidelines, so you're using it wrong. In any case, don't ever use their logo in your proposal, ever.
If there's something that you're selling naming rights to, for instance, like a major sponsorship or naming rights to a race car, you can offer to mock it up for them, but don't do it without their permission. Okay. Last thing on the title page down the bottom, include some copyright wording. You are going to be including some creative ideas and things like that. And while 99.99% of sponsors will not steal ideas and give you the flick, it's just smart to cover that base.
Okay, the second page is completely optional, but I think it really says something about your professionalism, gives you a bit of style. So we're going to establish the tone. So on that page, include just one great quote or one arresting statistic or even one amazing photo.
You basically want to set the stage for who you are and what you're about. You're going to have something that you can access. This is the time to do it. Okay, the next part of the sponsorship proposal is where you start to put the meat on the bones. It's...
about creating context and the first part of that is an overview. You want to create a one-page overview of the property you're selling. So overview the festival, overview the museum, overview the professional association, or whatever it is you're selling sponsorship of.
This is not an executive summary of the offer. If you do an executive summary of the offer, all they'll read is that one page and then they'll look at the dollars and they'll make their decision based on one page of information. We don't want that. We want to build the business case so that by the time they get to the dollars, they are most likely to say yes.
So in this overview, you want to emphasize what your property means to your fans, why they love what you do, why they care, the properties placed in their lives and all of that. You want to draw the sponsor in, but don't pitch at this point. It's far too early. The next page should be sort of an FAQ, sort of frequently asked questions or event details or something like that. It's just the basic facts about the property.
It's going to be a very dry page. You might even put it in sort of a list form. You'd include things like key dates, the location, your expected attendance, ticket prices, etc., etc.
The real basics. The basic idea here is you don't want people three quarters of the way through your proposal and they don't know what city your festival is in. The next section of your proposal is about establishing relevance and professionalism.
And the first page of that is about your target markets. You need to segment your target markets and you need to do it psychographically. This is very different than segmenting demographically.
Demographics is about the hard information about your target markets. That is age, gender, where they live, socioeconomics, etc, etc. It's what a person is, not who they are. Psychographics on the other hand is all about who they are. It's about their motivations, their self-definitions, their priorities.
And in this case you're going to be segmenting people based on the primary reason they love what you do. So let's just say you're a team, you're a football team. There may be a segment that is primarily motivated by their love for the team. There might be another segment that loves what you do because they love that tribalism and being part of that fan group and being in the crowds.
And there might be yet another segment that's primary reason for loving your team is because it's a great excuse to... go out all day and have some beers and have a great time with their mates. So that's three different segments and you would then describe each of those.
Whoever you're targeting, you want to put the most important markets to that sponsor on the top. And then you would also include aspects that would be important to that sponsor. For instance, if you've got a psychographic segment that are big travelers, and you are targeting an airline, you would definitely say, this group is big travelers. All right, the next page is about your marketing plan.
The first thing you need to do is outline your marketing objectives. You know, what perceptions and behaviors are you trying to change this year? Are you trying to sell more tickets?
Are you trying to sell tickets earlier? Are you trying to become the association of choice for graduates? Or what is it that you're trying to accomplish? Then you want to outline your key messages.
Just a few bullet points will be fine. And from there, you want to overview the components of your marketing plan. It doesn't need to be your whole marketing plan, but it will probably spread out over a couple of pages.
Talk about what you do in social media and what you're going to do in social media to achieve those objectives. Talk about what you do on your website. Do you do anything with email?
You know, do EDMs or newsletters or anything like that? Do you do any promotions or do you do any above the line? Do you have a publicist? And on and on and on.
Basically, what you're doing is you're showcasing that you understand who your target markets are and you understand how to nurture your relationship with them and achieve your objectives. This shows a sponsor so much about your professionalism and your commercial orientation. Okay. Now we're at the climax of your story arc.
This is all about creating the vision. At this point, you've actually laid all the groundwork and now you want the sponsor to understand exactly what this means to them, their target markets, and their brand. So the first thing you want to do is to say something like, based on our research and our phone meeting, we understand that your overall marketing objectives are as follows, and then put some bullet points. And these will all always be, okay, about how they want to change perceptions or behaviors around their brand. Then you want to say something like, based on those objectives and our understanding of your target market, we've provided a range of creative leverage ideas, ideas for how you can use this sponsorship to achieve those goals.
And then you want to put out probably a minimum of four, but it could be up to eight or nine or even more ideas. Now, those ideas could be, you know, one sentence and two lines long, or it might take a couple of paragraphs to actually lay out an idea. Now, these ideas will basically be about how they can do stuff that will deepen their relationship with the target market, or to increase their relevance to that target market, or to directly achieve their brand and business objectives. Okay, with the vision established, it's time to get to the bottom line. And the first section of this is probably going to be two pages, could be a little bit more.
but it's all about the benefits you're going to be providing. Now, you do want to include all of the benefits that are going to be required to make the leverage ideas happen. So those ideas that you've just fed to the sponsor, if they're creative and interesting, will probably require some creative, interesting benefits from you. Do include some hygiene benefits as well.
I mean, sponsors expect them, and it's perfectly normal to be including some logos, some tickets, some hospitality, etc., etc., and that's fine. But what you want to do is to make sure that the most interesting, meaningful benefits are at the top of the list. And you want to de-emphasize stuff like where all the places are you going to put their logo.
Now, I would actually suggest that you use the generic inventory that I link to in the description. The generic inventory is a tool that is directly out of the Sponsorship Seekers Toolkit. But I'm letting you download it with no strings attached. And it's a long Word document that outlines...
huge number of options for benefits that you can provide a sponsor. Now these are options. You would never offer a sponsor everything on there. In fact you wouldn't even offer a sponsor half or a quarter of everything on there because they all need different things.
They're just options. So you can pick and choose from that generic inventory. But in that generic inventory they are actually arranged in categories. So when you do your benefits list and pick and choose from that generic inventory keep them in the categories because that makes it really easy for a sponsor to review what you've offered.
Okay, now we're talking about money. Your final page is about the investment. So that investment could include cash, it could include contra or in-kind, and some people even call it trade. You could even include some promotional requirements.
For instance, if you are pitching an airline about your festival, you could ask them to include your festival in their calendar of events, or you could ask that they have a, you know, one of their writers or a writer's guide. write about your festival and include an article in your in-flight magazine. And you also want to include the terms.
Do definitely state on this page that you are absolutely happy to revisit the offer if it doesn't completely suit their needs. Now here's the thing. Even if this offer does not 100% suit their needs, you have done everything right.
So if they see the relevance that you've pointed out and if they can see how this is going to connect them further with their target markets. Even if you don't have everything exactly right, they'll come back to you and collaborate to get the final offer just perfect so they're most likely to say yes to you. Okay, I know I said that the financial stuff was the last page, but there's actually an optional addendum.
Now the addendum would include some short case studies showcasing how your current or former sponsors have achieved a commercial return. So maybe 100 to 150 words each, maybe two or three of them saying how they have achieved a commercial return, which in sponsorship terms is about how they have changed people's perceptions or changed their behaviors via this sponsorship around their brand. Okay. And that's it. You're done.
That was Sponsorship Proposal Basics in about 15 minutes. Remember, there are tons more resources in the video description, and good luck on all your sponsorship endeavors.