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

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And things only get worse when talking about Internet based companies. For example, Groupon and Facebook have both shown interest in an IPO, which could push out other, weaker tech companies. And this is not good news for Pandora, whose biggest weakness is monetizing their service. For example, the two main revenue streams are ads and membership fees that eliminate ads. But the membership fees only make up 14.5% of their revenues, and that’s a problem since advertisers haven’t put their full trust in Internet based advertising.

This brings us back to our original topic. Yes filling a need is crucial to success (look at the great depression which was partially created and fueled by overproduction of unwanted and unaffordable products). Pandora has met a need, but if they are going to be successful going forward (and receive my investment in their stock) they need to find ways to bring in more revenues from more avenues. It will be interesting to see what they do.

-Austin

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David v. Goliath (who once was David)

As I was growing up, Best Buy was unquestionably a place you would beg to be dropped off while your mom visited the nearest clothing outlet or mall, as was often the case. You would spend hours walking through an endless display of mystical, amazing, and ‘necessary’ technology. Best Buy was one of these fabulous success stories eventually rising to the top of the consumer electronics industry (and for many good reasons).

They were, without a doubt, at the top of their class.

However, as I came of age there was a David in the making. By the time I was at college in 2006, there was this cool website where you could order some of that mystical technology you had put your hands on in middle school and dreamed of owning growing up… but there was a conflict of interests.

When you were younger, you always pictured yourself buying that laptop, that external hard drive, and that flash drive from Best Buy.

So naturally, you head to Best Buy. As you arrive you are greeted by some pretty un-helpful employees. You ask about the famous price match that you used to use as the reason for coming to Best Buy instead of say, Circuit City. They ask which store you found a better price, was it Circuit City? Target? Wal-Mart?

You respond, ‘Newegg has them for $50 less. That exact product.’ The employee looks back at you oddly… I wrote about this story in February of 2010 and pointed to the fact that if something didn’t change, companies like NewEgg and Amazon were certainly going to win that race (the original blog found here).

Like I said in the previous blog, I had mad respect for Best Buy growing up. I fully expected them to figure it out and make adjustments to be competitive with online companies. Well, a recent event has forever forced me to give up hope on Best Buy and officially claim NewEgg king. Best Buy clearly doesn’t get ‘it’ and on so many levels.

The New(Egg) King

If you don’t know about the fiasco involving Best Buy issuing a cease and desist to NewEgg… well you should. NewEgg made a pretty hilarious commercial, featured below:

First off, that is a pretty classic commercial. Secondly, it is of note that in marketing it is a general fact that as long as you are not the top dog in an industry or category, poking fun at the leader is an acceptable practice.

Best Buy issued a cease and desist to NewEgg after this commercial was met with much On Air and Internet success. What happens next is something that is probably going to be the stuff of social media legend. Instead of ignoring it or hiding it or actually removing the commercial, NewEgg posted the cease and desist documentation to their Facebook Fan Page! How crazy is that! They also posted their response to their Facebook and Twitter.

Between the two posts (of both documentations on Facebook), there were over 2,000 comments and 3400 ‘likes’ on Facebook. Not only that, but the views on the YouTube commercial spiked, were imbedded in blogs like this, and the whole story covered here and in like places. This is viral in about as many ways as is possible and this is only talking about Facebook. I saw countless people tweeting and retweeting this stuff.

So What?

There is no reason, at all, that Best Buy should be losing to NewEgg. Their brand was so deeply ingrained in my brain that I literally went to their store to ask for the price match before I would even consider buying from NewEgg. They had me, my money, my word of mouth, and my loyalty… and they squandered it.

They use their social media channels to blast you with sales, deals, and new products. All the while, NewEgg is using theirs to actually interact and connect with their followers.

But so what? Why do they care about my business or my loyalty? Don’t they have 3 million fans to NewEgg’s 600 thousand? Don’t they make more money than NewEgg?

Certainly, they do. But the game is changing and NewEgg understands the new rules. In fact, they are creating them.

Best Buy’s bottom line might look good right now, but we’ll see who still stands in 5 years. My bet’s on NewEgg. It’s a shame they are private, or I know what shares I would be buying… My money would gladly rest in the laurels of David.

Zach

P.S. NewEgg got a little crazy after those two postings. To further the ‘Geek On’ marketing campaign as featured in the video ad above, they gave away 5,000 shirts with the Geek On logo on it (also seen above). The first 5,000 customers to order it from their store got it absolutely free. At the same time, if you head over to the Best Buy fan page you can catch the online only, one day sale of that Flip Mino I bought from NewEgg last year…

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1. An ad about an upcoming convention we are hosting that showed up to current fans

2. An ad geared towards people who don’t yet play our games, but are friends with current fans

After a week or so, I had received 5 text messages from various friends saying something along the lines of,

“Hey, I just saw a Facebook ad for your site. It was legit.”

Facebook ads is actually pretty fantastic as far as targeting goes. You can get pretty specific about who is going to be seeing your ads. My only concern was whether or not people would actually see the ads on Facebook.

I know most of the time I don’t notice them, but I was curious who would see them. After getting the response I did from friends, it was pretty obvious that a fair number of people were seeing the ads. For those unfamiliar with Facebook Ads, there are three major sections when setting up an ad:

1. Design Your Ad

This section is pretty straightforward. You can see it here:

You can see that it gives a preview of your ad at the bottom. Don’t be afraid to tweak this until you are happy. In fact, I would recommend creating multiple campaigns and seeing what happens. Testing out images and wording can both affect the number of people who see and click your ad.

2. Targeting

For me, this is actually the most useful part. What is crazy is that regardless if you actually do a Facebook ad or not, this could be an amazing tool. As an example, I narrowed down this sample ad to:

- Males
- Ages 22-32
- Live in the U.S. and in Tulsa, Oklahoma
- And who have ‘Marketing’ listed as an interest on their profile

It estimates that the reach of my ad will be around 1,100 people (this box is shown to the right of the screen). Regardless of your topic, this could really be great for preliminary research on starting a business. You can get a feel for who is out there that you could potentially tap into and who you can market to once you actually do launch. The first time I used this tool I was playing with it for a few hours.

You can see the top part of #2 here:

3. Campaigns, Pricing and Scheduling

If you don’t know how Internet ads work, you can either pay per click or per impression. For most small businesses, I would highly recommend per click. IF you pay per click, viewers have to actually click on the ad before it does anything. If you pay per impression, your ad could appear on a page and even if they don’t see it you have to pay.

You can set up a time frame, daily budget, and bid price in this section. These are standard features for online advertising and are really nice to have. They also have a recommended bid. This is based on the competing ads and how many times they think your ad needs to show up to get clicked to hit your budget. Obviously something you can play with, but overall it’s a pretty good system.

The Results

My gaming blog has spent a little over $30 in advertising in the past month and if nothing else it was worth the text messages from my friends. Being serious, I’m still not sure the exact impact it had. We have gained 20 or so fans in that time, but how much was related to the ad I’m not sure.

I really think local businesses are going to be able to use this in interesting ways. The ability to market to just the friends of your fans is a big deal. I think online businesses and blogs can certainly use it as well, but it’s just a different form. If you haven’t experimented with this tool yet, I recommend heading over to the Facebook ads section and checking it out. Like I said previously, the targeting section is worth looking at if nothing else.

If you have had any experience with Facebook ads I’d love to hear about it. It’s a relatively new platform, so I’d be interested in stories of successes and failures on Facebook. And as always, questions or thoughts are more than welcome.

Zach

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On Saturday, Robert Herjavec (one of the Sharks) tweeted that Friday’s ratings for the show improved by 25%. That is a very significant increase in ratings. When I read his tweet I instantly knew why the show had the rating increase. You see this season something the Sharks started doing was tweeting live during the show. So, as a fan of the show I can interact with the Sharks. This is brilliant, because it gives me a reason to watch the show on Friday when it airs instead of waiting to record it on DVR or to watch it online the next day.

I found the show last year, but never knew when it aired, so I just would search on hulu to find it. I was very nervous the show was not going to come back this year, because I figured the ratings were low due to the fact that it wasn’t very well publicized. After waiting and hoping it would return, I found out it did, yet again it started without my knowledge. I started watching the second week, as I watched I tweeted about things going on. As I tweeted a good friend of mine started tweeting at me about the show and we talked about the show. The next week I found out the Sharks were tweeting live with the hash tag #sharktank.

Not many shows I know of have pulled off the live tweeting aspect as well as Shark Tank. The brilliance of social media is to figure out how to use it in your favor. The Sharks realized that they could create a buzz about the show if they took the time to interact with their fans. That in turn created a 25% increase in ratings!

How are you using social media to increase the amount of people that know about your company?

-David

P.S. If you are interested in watching Shark Tank it airs on Friday nights at 8/7c on ABC.

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This past week I was entertaining the idea of purchasing a new TV. I had done some reaseach on the internet for various brands and models. One model got me really excited so I did some deeper research. This is where the amazement took place. I copied the model number from the manufacturer’s site and pasted it in Google. I pressed enter and the top result looked a little different than usual. It was a slightly different entry with a picture of my friend and his twitter account with a link to it as well as the TV. This totally blew my mind. I was abviously signed into Twitter at the time (although I didn’t have the page up, my computer just remember my information) so google, in the matter of milliseconds searched through millions of tweets and found something my friend had said 4 months ago about that same TV. What a glorious thing to do.

The possibilities of uses with an integration such as this seem limitless. If another friend of mine has said something about a certain product, or movie, or heck, anything, I can just Google it, and Google with instantly tell me what they said. I know this is the beginning stage of this type of thing, but I expect this to get HUGE and fast. Google is on board with what Pull was discussing and I believe they are extremelly well aligned with the wants, needs, and demands of consumers in the market. I’m excited to see what happens as Google continues to take over the world.

Austin

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This past weekend, I had an interesting experience and decided to blog about it (Kafe Bonehead). When you call out a small business, especially one that is a local coffee shop frequented by many of the people that follow you on Twitter or are friends with you on Facebook, it would be silly not to expect some disagreement or backlash.

After reading some of the tweets directed at me and also some of the responses on the blog itself, I took another look at what I had written. I don’t think I expressed clearly enough my side of things and I took for granted that everyone reading it sees things the way I do. Of course you don’t. I don’t expect or desire that you do see things the way I do. To this end, I felt obligated to offer one final response to the experience.

An Opportunity of a Lifetime

There are three ways the employees of Kafe Bona could have responded when I walked into Kafe Bona this past weekend:

1. They could have done exactly what they did. I walk in and the employee enacts some policy about me not being able to have an outside drink in their store.
2. I walk in and the employees say nothing.
3. I walk in and the employees use me having a cup of Starbucks as an event that could transform me into a lifelong customer.

I don’t think most people see it this way… and I think this is why many small businesses are set to lose in the next few years. There are two things going on here. By doing the first one, you are risking offending a customer. Obviously, you don’t want to be walked on but offending people is not a great way of promoting loyalty. Regardless, I think my last blog focused too much on this.

The point I was making was that they are missing a HUGE opportunity.

The opportunity is in number 3. First off, instead of treating me like I was five they could have treated me like an adult. More importantly, they could have easily used this to make a connection with a customer (or even just a potential customer). You know, something you might expect from a small business.

Instead of having your employees trained to walk up to customers and tell them they have to throw away their drink or leave, why not have them trained to walk up to the customer and engage them?

For example, what if instead of engaging me in the way she did the employee had sat at the small table across from me and introduced herself. She then asks about what I am drinking. She can ask if I’ve ever tried their *insert comparable drink here* and offer me a free cup of it.

After walking away and fixing my new drink, she comes back and has me try it. She can ask me about which one tastes better, why, etc. At the end of the day, even if I don’t like the drink she made for me she could say, we actually don’t allow Starbucks cups in our store (making a joke of the competition) and telling me that I can keep my drink, but I have to put it in one of their cups.

You might be thinking. Why in the world would I, as a business owner, EVER give a person who brings a competitors product into my store and buys nothing something free? You want to win, right? Well… you had better start thinking like this, especially if you are competing with a company like Starbucks.

Beating Starbucks

Let’s face it. If you are in the local cafe or coffee shop industry, you’ve got a few very serious competitors. First off, you have Starbucks (who also owns Seattle’s Best). You’ve also got Peet’s coffee. On top of all of this, you have every other local cafe and coffee shop. Looking at the competition, you’ve got to be doing some things seriously awesome to compete.

Starbucks has a lot going for them. They have one of the most recognized brands in the world, have the largest number of stores (resulting in some seriously insane economies of scale), offer free internet (that also includes free access to sites like Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Economist), a very good quality of coffee, and an impressive rewards program.

Looking at the list, what could possibly be their weakness? Well, I don’t think they have many formal weaknesses. However, there is one thing that a local coffee shop has over Starbucks. Any guesses?

At the end of the day, Kafe Bona has only one thing they can do that Starbucks can never do. That is simply be local… and small. They can move faster and be more personal than Starbucks. This isn’t just about remembering your customers names, but actually engaging with them. This is understanding what is going on in the local community and in your customers lives. This is being super nice to everyone that walks in. And this is taking EVERY opportunity anyone gives you to turn them into not just a customer, but a supporter.

So What?

Even if in the example above I didn’t happen to like whatever coffee they had already brewed, they spent all of 2 cents to gain some valuable information. Companies pay a lot of money to get data like why a customer does or doesn’t like a particular product over another one. They also spent that 2 cents to potentially turn me into a huge customer.

You also have to realize that I took the time to come to your store. Obviously I at the very least like Kafe Bona. Without even asking if I would or planned on buying something, your first response is telling me I cannot have the drink? I think that is poor form. It is also notable that there was lots of space available at their store. If it had been crowded or I was taking up a large space and wasn’t supporting them at all, obviously you might question that.

Worst case, what do you think the odds are that I would tweet or facebook the fact that I just got a free cup of coffee from Kafe Bona (and that it tastes great)? As I see it, Kafe Bona had a chance to turn a semi-frequent customer into a very loyal supporter. What they did was lose that customer forever.

Zach

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I woke up bright and early this morning with a full slate of client meetings planned. One of them happened to be at a Starbucks. Due to how much I love the new Tribute Blend, I had no choice but to start the day off with a coffee. Anyways, after my meeting at Starbucks I had another at Kaffe Bona (literally about 100 feet away).

It was cold and raining, but I decided to just walk anyway. I sit down inside of Kaffe Bona and start getting my computer out. One of the ladies working there walked by and said, ‘Sorry, but we don’t allow outside drinks in here’ with a smile on her face. I kind of just laughed in response as she walked away.

A few minutes later, she walked up to my table and said, “Hey. I wasn’t kidding. You can’t be in here with an outside drink.” I respond, “Really?” She just looked at me as though I were a little kid.

I said, “Alrighty.” as I began to pack up my computer.

So What?

Now, I only had about a fourth of my coffee left. I could have just thrown it away. At this point though, there was no way I was going to stay there. I had two meetings slated to happen at Kaffe Bona and had intended on eating lunch there myself. I was NOT going to give them a dime of my money.

I walked back to Starbucks and texted both of the people I had planned on meeting that I’d prefer to meet at Starbucks. The first person I met with ordered a drink from Starbucks. The second actually brought his wife and both got drinks and a snack.

Instead of eating lunch, I was able to hop on the Starbucks Network and browse through the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Economist for free while waiting on people to arrive.

The sad part, I’ve had countless meetings both professionally and for school at Kaffe Bona. They have a drink and a sandwich that I love to eat and can hardly resist getting when I have a meeting there. But, I will never be going back. I almost emailed them through their site to tell them this story and how offended I am. However, they don’t deserve that. I’d rather just see them fail.

And this is why I go to Starbucks…

Zach

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You provide some kind of service, what can you do to add to the experience? Zach and I were talking about our mechanic and how he could blog and tweet about tips for mechanical trouble. We believe that it would help grow his customer base. The problem our mechanic has is that he doesn’t fully understand twitter or how blogging would help. Giving free advice is counterintuitive, it’s hard to take the step and do something for free. By giving people free advice about cars he would be creating a buzz about his company and about his advice. His customers would use it because they trust him; it would help his business because word would start to spread about his tips. It would give him a great way to connect with his customers. Think about it, if you could tweet your mechanic and ask him a quick question about something and he would answer honestly and not charge you; wouldn’t you tell people about him? I would, I would also be the most loyal customer ever.

Giving free advice may be hard to justify at first, but I bet if you could look in the future and see how much it could positively affect your business you wouldn’t think about it for a second. Setting time aside to blog or to tweet with your customers is a great way to grow your business. Learn to connect with customers in ways you never have before, you may be surprised at the results.

How do you use social media to connect with your customers?

-David

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Currently, there are more than 500 million users on Facebook. That’s crazy when you think about it. If Facebook was a country it would be the third largest according to population size. If Zuckerberg wanted all 500 million of his users to see one message or one ad or anything along these lines, it could be done. Where else in history has this ever been possible?

How does the value of Facebook help individual businesses? Well think in terms of how you can reach these people. Before when you wanted to notify people of what was happening, you could either post something to your website (which may or may not be successful), send out an email (which may be seen as spam) or do other small things that may or may not work. Well, if you have a  following on a tool such as Facebook, this is a lot easier.cespacespacespacespacespacespacespacespacespacespacespacespacespace

Not too long ago, Facebook passed Google for the most visited site in a particular month. More recently, they have fought back and forth for the leading position. Either way, number 1 or 2 isn’t bad when you’re talking about number of visits to your page on a global scale.

People are constantly checking their Facebook to see what’s happening, what their friends are doing, and what pages they are following are doing. So if you can build a following (tips here and here) you can take advantage of the top visited site in the world, with the largest network, and offer something to your customers that they might not know about if Facebook didn’t exist.

One great example is the ability to offer coupons through Facebook. Currently there is a feature where you can put a “special” on Facebook and customers click a link. A mobile UPC code comes up on your mobile device and the business can scan the deal in-store, eliminating the hassle of printing for the customer.

This is just the beginning. The possibilities are endless. As technology advances and consumers continue to flock to the web, stop viewing Facebook as just a way to connect with friends and start seeing it as a way to connect with your customers on a very different level.

How are you using social media to market to customers? Does it work?

Austin

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