Turning Sponsorships into Partnerships

The hunt for sponsors is a year-around duty – there’s always eligible businesses and there’s always empty advertising space, tangible or intangible. What if we looked at these sponsorships as partnerships – where both parties were looking to increase revenue through an agreement.

Sponsorship: to sponsor something is to support an event, activity, person, or organization financially or through the provision of products or services. A sponsor is the individual or group that provides the support, similar to a benefactor.

Partnership: a cooperative relationship between people or groups who agree to share responsibility for achieving some specific goal; “effective language learning is a partnership between school, teacher and student”; “the action teams worked in partnership with the government”

If you look at the primary reasons that some sponsors don’t renew their contracts with athletic departments (for example), lack of ROI is going to be at the top of the list in most cases. Companies dish out 10-15 K hoping to gain a 5 percent rate of return on their investment. Here’s a little insight, sponsoring a halftime performance isn’t going to have people lining up at your door the next morning to buy insurance from you. It takes teamwork, creativity, and most of the time a little extra work from the party initially receiving the payment.

Now, I realize that there is a place for the $3000/year sponsorships where a banner will be hung from a railing and both parties involved are completely content. The sponsor chooses to pay the fee because they feel its their duty to have a presence at community events. I’m writing this more for the businesses that want to advertise at a sporting event for the sole purpose of seeing a drastic increase in revenue. Obviously the athletic department will receive revenue from the business for the advertising rights – but what if the athletic department went one step further? Encourage the sponsor to advertise the athletic department at their place of business, thus increasing attendance at games, which will allow more people to witness the advertising that they originally paid for.

For example, if McAlister’s Deli chooses to advertise with the ORU athletic department, why shouldn’t all McAlister’s employees be wearing ORU apparel on game days and running game day specials to increase pre-game traffic into the restaurant. So many businesses choose to buy advertising and then just hope and pray that sales shoot through the roof. Of course, this is just one example. It’s important to meet with your “partner” I find ways to make your sponsorship reach its maximum potential.

This aspect of advertising at athletic events should be called a partnership for 2 reasons: (1) The marketing staff should be active in offering advice and ideas to help build off of the marketing campaign that the business is already running. As the professional, help them devise plans to help “their dollar go further” while also increasing awareness of your department. (2) Chances are – your department needs some marketing help too! It’s not a bad idea to discount the price of the advertising if the “sponsor” agrees to advertise on their end. My suggestion is to have that partnership mentality with your sponsorships so that  both parties are gaining that highly coveted “added value” to sweeten the deal on both ends. Be creative. After all, you’re in a marketing position. Spread your creative wings and stretch to get every last dollar out of the deal.

About the Author

Kyle Krajenka is a recent graduate of Oral Roberts University (’11) and a young professional at the beginning of his career in the sports industry. He currently does marketing/game entertainment for the WNBA’s Tulsa Shock and manages social media accounts for the ORU Athletic Department (Twitter & Facebook). He can be reached on his Twitter or LinkedIn accounts or at kylekrajenka@gmail.com