How To Be A Party Goddess Blog

We love Courtney Cox in Scream and we’re sure she’ll make the cut for Scream 4.  Kristen Bell and Anna Paquin will also be gracing the big screen with cameo appearances on the movie!  Fun!! So why do I wanna scream?  Because sometimes event sponsorships can be so much fun when working with the right partners.

How do you approach possible prospects for sponsors, correspondents, sample letters, follow up strategies, etc.?  Oh my god this is like a 10 hour class, but here are some tips:

What is Event Sponsorship? First of all, when you’re going for event sponsorship and remember event sponsorship means different things to different people. So event sponsorship can be anything from money, which of course is the golden ticket, we all want cash with no strings attached. These days with the economy and I hate to fall back on that but that’s not happening very often. It will happen later but it takes a little while.

The next form of sponsorship is in kind sponsorship where you get products, etc or you get someone’s service which would be considered sponsorship. So when you go out looking for money because she doesn’t say Angela what of event you’re looking for sponsors for but remember that there is more than one way to skin a cat. I know the first time I went out looking for event sponsorship I was like hi okay can you please give me $1,000, $5,000 or $10,000? These companies looked at me like I was smoking crack because (a) they have no relationship with me in that way and (b) they’re not exactly sure what they’re getting for their money.

Explore the Possibilities It depends on what kind of event, etc. But you want to instead of getting the money say hey listen we’re going to put on this event and we need a venue, food, beverages and all these other things. What I would do is brainstorm a list of all the different components of the particular event and literally brainstorm all those different components and then instead of…of course try to get money but the second thing is instead of going after the company and let’s say it is an event for 500 people and you want to say I want to serve dinner for 500 people, you’re probably not going to get that.

But what you might get is hor d’ouerves for 100. So go ask 5 companies for 100. I know when we do stuff for swag bags, if we needed 1,000 swag bags in the beginning when we would do it but don’t make this mistake, in the beginning when we would do it is we would go after companies and say hi we need 1,000 of your products. Well companies would freak out, they couldn’t give you 1,000 of their product.

So we started saying we’re filling 1,000 swag bags and, of course, we would love 1,000 of something but don’t be shy we would love to take even 100 of that items. Then you can fill your swag bag with some great stuff but you just fill them with 10 items of 100. It is a little more work for you.

Master The Approach The other thing to do is have a sponsorship deck.  Have 1 or 2 sheets of sponsorship levels and I’m making this up but $5,000, $2,000, $500 and you want to be able to tell them what they get. Do they get exposure on your website, Twitter, blog and then what kind of followers, what kind of traction are they going to get? Are you running ads in magazines and will they get to be part of that? Will you have a link on your website? Are you going to send out weekly ezines? All those things.

So for “x” amount of in kind sponsorship they will get Y and then make sure you’re very clear about what the event does and who the target audience is. Sponsors really want to know who you’re target audience is and how you’re reaching them because they want to align themselves with a target audience they’re already looking to be in front of and then they’ll decide.

Remember, again if you have no connection to a vendor it is going to be a lot more difficult to get money or product or anything out of them because they’re going to say what have you done for me lately. So in that case you go with one of my golden rules which is do unto others before they do unto you. Meaning do something and make sure you start with vendors who you already have a relationship with, you’re already friends with them, you give them a lot of business and that kind of thing. Then start small and work up.

But you’re going to need to create a sponsorship deck and you can probably Google that. Find some great examples of sponsorship decks. I think like 2 pages is perfectly sufficient for most events.  I would start with a phone call and see if they’re interested and get the name of the person to whom you should send it and go ahead and send it over in the body of an email as well as in an attachment because a lot of people will never open attachment at all. Then follow up, follow up, follow up and if you send an email and they don’t call you back, remember this is a whole sales thing so just keep following up.

Ask For Referrals The other thing is you ask them, let’s say you get a bite and they say yes I will donate to your swag bag or provide “x” number of hor d’ouerves then what you want to do is say, listen do you know anybody else who might be interested in doing this or this would be a great audience? But you want to keep selling them benefits. I can’t emphasize this enough. Don’t tell them they will have exposure but say it as a benefit. They will have access to XYZ target audience and you will give them the list of names after the event. What are they going to get? Even if it is just product for them they need something.

But definitely a sponsorship deck, definitely relationship and I like the call and email thing. but whatever you do the second they give you something you better follow up with a thank you note and plugging them and mentioning them anywhere you can on Twitter, blogs, etc. because that makes a big difference.

Much Success!

Marley

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