Sponsorship Blog

Event sponsorship is an ultra-competitive business. Everyone says they want more sponsors. The truth is they want more money. Nothing wrong with that, it’s why we are all in the business. I hear from dozens of event producers every week who are looking for help. My first step in evaluating them as a potential client is to review their website,…

In this two minute clip Larry discusses the most effective approaches to making the kind of connection to prospects that will greatly improve your chances of making a sale.

Using data to grow sponsorship is often overlooked or improperly implemented. In this clip from my interview with Dan Kimball the Senior Vice President of Marketing at eventbrite.com headquarters in San Francisco we discuss tactics and trends for the successful use of data to influence and close sponsorship deals. 

The Sponsorship Guy’s Pro Tips for Finding Leads You are on LinkedIn. You are trying to find new prospects. When I enter “Sponsorship” into the search field, I get 13,805,662 results. Not helpful. By further filtering to just the United States and to the Marketing and Advertising Industry we are down to 429, 938. Still, not even close. Using your…

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash Have you ever completed a form that asks you for your Age, Sex, Race, and Income? Kind of feels like it is none of their business, doesn’t it? Being a 25 to 35-year-old white male is a pretty diverse group. It is hard for a prospective sponsor to draw many insights from that information. Do they like beer?…

Not all data is created equal, says sponsorship expert Larry Weil. Instead, he’s sharing how to close a sponsorship deal with data points that are actually meaningful to prospects, and what insights to leave OUT of your pitch deck. You have done your homework and have used insights to identify a prospect that is likely to value your property. You…

Would you rather call or email a prospect? Sure, you can send off a bunch of emails, (and I’m not saying you shouldn’t) but we all know the data on email conversions. Has anyone ever responded to an email by thanking you and saying that they are ready to buy? My experience is that you are much more likely to…

This post was originally published on the Eventbrite blog. Read the original post here. Rules for event sponsorship success Sponsorship is a $62.7 billion industry. Its annual growth has surpassed other forms of marketing and advertising. With so much spending, your chances of winning event sponsors could be increasing — right? Sponsorship expert Larry Weil says the answer greatly depends…

This post was originally published on the Eventbrite blog. Read the original post here. What’s your go-to method for contacting event sponsors? In a recent survey of event professionals, nearly half (42%) said their primary method for contacting sponsors was email. So if you said email, you’re in good company. But while email is an effective tool for reaching out to prospects, you…

I am often asked, what is sponsorship? It used to be a pretty simple answer. Most people think of sports sponsorships like McDonald’s and the U.S. Olympic team, or Bud Light and the NFL. There are many easy examples to see in sports, so it is a good place to start. Sponsorship has grown to be a massive source of…

Lots of properties contact me to tell me about what a great match they are for one of my clients. They have spent a lot of time rationalizing. Very often they are trying to make something fit because it meets their needs not the sponsor’s. So they twist and mush until they think they have an exciting story to tell.…

Many of us have heard the expression that a carpenter is only as good as his (or her) tools. The application to any kind of sales, but especially sponsorship sales is pretty obvious. But you can’t talk about tools without talking about mastery. I recently had a conversation with someone who I consider to be a pretty good sales person.…

It wasn’t that long ago that Sponsorship was pretty straightforward. Lots of companies were enamored with the opportunity to link their brand to a team, property or venue. Call it the “halo effect”, affinity or just the popularity of sports, celebrity, music, or cause. Plenty of free spending brands wanted to latch on for the ride. Top 6 Challenges to…

Let’s not kid ourselves. You don’t want to answer the phone and get a sales pitch and neither does your prospect. So how do you sell without a sales pitch? Stop selling. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. If someone sends you an email, reaches out on LinkedIn, leaves a voice mail or actually reaches you live, what would keep…