How to Get Sponsored: $50K in 4 Weeks

Pulling in $50,000 in sponsorships alone in a couple of month. Can or not it’s performed? Positive.

However because the Foundr workforce and I set out to just do that, beginning with a grand complete of $0 thoughts you, I discovered myself dealing with down the barrel of the tougher query:

How to get sponsored?

Now I’m certain there are some gross sales gurus on the market who would snort at this, and see $50,000 as “small money,” however should you’re something like me, properly I’m only a common man working in a fast-growth startup.

Pulling that sort of cash out of skinny air is a little bit of a problem. Additionally, making sponsorship offers can take a little bit of time.

I first launched into this process again after we had been working our very first Kickstarter marketing campaign, and promoting our very first bodily product, the Foundr V1.0 e book. The marketing campaign was already in movement, and I used to be silly sufficient to say, “How can we get guaranteed backers, and not just hope people will buy our book?”

Undoubtedly one assembly the place I ought to have stored my mouth shut.

However at Foundr, we run quick and lean. We wished to hit at the least $200,000 for our first crowdfunding marketing campaign in help of our e book. And that may be a crap-ton of books to promote.

(*4*)

Sure, we’ve a giant model and a killer viewers of individuals like your good self, however to promote round 2,500 books on our first try, properly, it’s removed from assured. This was again in the day after we had been a child firm simply studying to stroll – we solely had a small workforce of 10 remote-working employees members as opposed to in the present day’s Foundr drive of 30+ full-time workers throughout the globe.

However again in the day, this was not that straightforward.

I steered that we must always get proactive, make some offers, and take a look at to assure some backers by providing one thing extra than simply books.

What if we might promote sponsorship packages on Kickstarter as high-priced perks to backers?  That manner we might improve funding and use an asset we already owned – consideration.

We might supply manufacturers or different entrepreneurs sponsorships, giving them some sort of publicity through our model and marketing campaign, in change for funding our undertaking at a excessive degree.

Nathan (our CEO) agreed on the spot and requested how a lot I assumed we might pull in. No concept the place we bought the determine however we selected $50,000.

And similar to that, I used to be on the hook to pull in 50 grand, in addition to my day-to-day position at Foundr. That’s startup life.

So let’s break it down.

How to Get Sponsored in 4 Weeks

The Problem

To lift $50,000 in 4 weeks (that’s $12,500 per week).

We had been beginning with:

• No offers
• No templates
• No provides
• No contracts
• No prospects
• No pipelines

The Outcome

Ultimately, we truly pulled in over $70,000 {dollars} in sponsorships, smashing our goal with only a one-person gross sales workforce (sadly, not the entire cash was ready to undergo the Kickstarter, however hey, cash is cash).

If you would like to know the way to get sponsored and rip cash out of the air, ask strangers for cash, and get a complete bunch of sponsorships…

I’ll stroll you thru what I did.

Right here had been the important thing components:

1. The supply (What might we provide in return for sponsorship cash? i.e. what might we promote?)
2. The prospects (Who may take up that supply?)
3. The outreach (How might I get in contact with everybody in a brief time frame?)
4. The deal (Convincing individuals to sponsor us with chilly exhausting money)

The Provide

Every little thing in enterprise is a transaction. It’s an change. And one factor that drives me loopy round Kickstarters and fundraising is what I name the “beggar mentality.”

You’ll have seen it. It’s the place individuals say, “I want to raise money, please give me some.” It’s simply fancy begging and never that completely different from rattling a tin can on the road.

It doesn’t matter how superb your product, service, concept, or enterprise is. You’ll repel individuals with this method. You’re not providing worth—or at the least you aren’t speaking that worth properly to others.

So if you would like to get individuals to provide you with cash, whether or not that’s sponsorship or backing on Kickstarter, what’s the change? What are you going to do for them?

It’s additionally a much more highly effective place to come from. You have got one thing of worth. When it’s restricted or scarce you should use “prizing” to your profit. One thing I discovered from Oren Klaff. It’s going to be a lot simpler to generate curiosity and get sponsors and cash if in case you have a pretty supply.

What might Foundr supply that had worth to different individuals?

That is the place the partnership triad kicks in, one thing I discovered from Daniel Priestley. In each profitable partnership, each enterprise, even large manufacturers like Nike, have one thing that they want. It’s your job to discover an intersection between what others want, and what you’ve.

For bigger manufacturers, a profitable partnership may imply having cash in the financial institution to pay for publicity through promoting. Others will want to leverage belongings just like the energy of their branding or viewers. Or it could possibly be one thing so simple as your experience, and even having an workplace area individuals need to use. The concept is to take a look at what belongings you’ve that may have worth to others and allow you to get what you want.

In our case, we had an viewers, however we wanted cash for our  Kickstarter marketing campaign.  Our change can be easy: the viewers for cash.  We determined to supply sponsorship packages together with podcasts and journal commercials – one thing we don’t often do.

Subsequent, we made it compelling by pricing it very aggressively in order that it was extraordinarily aggressive and wonderful worth. We knew that if somebody wished to promote to startups and entrepreneurs, we might put them in entrance of our viewers and as a bonus with a little bit of an added halo impact from our model.

How to Get Sponsored and Make This Work for You

If you would like to know the way to get sponsored, merely take a look at what you’ve which you could supply. Podcast promoting, social mentions, an e-mail broadcast to your subscribers, product opinions, creating content material, merchandise, experience, member specials, workshops, and occasions. What are you able to supply, that has worth to them? Assume: branding, viewers, data, alternative

Within the case of promoting or on the lookout for sponsors, this can usually be particular attain and viewers numbers.

Subsequent, guarantee your supply is extraordinarily compelling and competitively priced. This makes it far simpler for you to pitch and promote – even if you’re not superb at gross sales. Add in extras and be prepared to negotiate.

By the top of this stage, it is best to have a proposal, in element, that’s properly defined and properly priced. What’s going to your sponsor get for providing you with their cash?

It’s additionally an incredible concept to have a couple of value level or supply. That manner you possibly can at all times negotiate down.

The Prospects

As we crafted our supply, we had a reasonably good concept of who may take this up (trace: the most effective prospects are people who find themselves already shopping for what you’re going to supply).

Subsequent, I labored with Charlotte, one of many superb directors on our workforce, to take a look at the highest podcasts in our area, and discover out which of them had promoting so we might search for extremely certified prospects to method.

Charlotte created a listing of who was already paying for promoting, and which podcasts they had been promoting on. She then created a listing of contacts and emails for these corporations. There have been solely 10-20 prospects, and I knew we would wish a much bigger listing. The query was, who would need to get in entrance of our viewers and be a superb match for our model?

We shortly determined that SaaS corporations and instruments that had been funded would a) have an interest in progress, and b) have promoting budgets.

This was one thing I knew from my days working at ‘Elance’. A variety of corporations have an incredible product, they’ve cash for promoting, however they’re on the lookout for engaged audiences.

Charlotte used LinkedIn once more and generated a fairly horny listing of about 200 potential corporations I might attain out to.

Nothing fancy, only a spreadsheet. However listen, as a result of issues are about to get attention-grabbing. Be sure you have the fields “company name,” “first name,” “last name,” and “email” if you would like to comply with my methodology and advertising and marketing stack.

When you get very clear in your goal buyer/sponsor, it needs to be fairly straightforward to put collectively a listing of people who find themselves already paying for sponsorships, and likewise corporations that could be .

The Outreach

Time to get our arms a little bit soiled. Now I’m not fully pleased with what I did, however I do like how I did it. I wanted to discover a manner to contact prospects and make them a proposal, and the one manner to do that is via good-ole-fashioned cold-calling.

Nobody likes cold-calling. Nobody likes cold-emails both, except that electronic mail is extremely focused, compelling, and has one thing that they need.

Firstly, we want to contact 200 or so individuals. It wants to be a good quantity as a result of, like all gross sales or partnership funnel, out of that 200 possibly 40% open the e-mail, 20% reply, after which 5-10% may very well find yourself changing into a associate.

Secondly, we want to give them an attention-grabbing, attractive message. You’re fishing for consideration and also you want some juicy bait to get some bites.

Now for a long-time, I’ve been utilizing a secret weapon that may be a little dear however well worth the cash. I don’t even like sharing it right here, however it’s an incredible device. It’s known as Contactually. It’s a CRM that integrates superbly with Gmail, and it does just a few issues VERY properly.

First, you possibly can bulk and personalize emails. Cool proper? Meaning you possibly can ship 200 emails in one click on despatched out of your Gmail which is an absolute game-changer proper there.

The center of outreach at scale is that it wants to be private, in any other case it will likely be ignored. Persons are at all times looking out for bulk messages, and so they burn them on sight.

However an electronic mail that has their identify, firm, and electronic mail all referenced? Nicely, that’s a little bit extra private. That buys you just a few additional seconds of their consideration and at the least will improve your possibilities that they’ll open it.

Second, Contactually reveals you if the particular person you might be emailing has acquired, opened, considered, and clicked your electronic mail.

That is simply pure gold.

.

You may arrange follow-up emails so if anybody doesn’t open your electronic mail you possibly can contact them. Be tremendous cautious not to be a pest or overly needy, you need to gently nudge them and never inundate them with aggressive emails.

Use this took to gauge whether or not individuals are or not.  You may then begin a follow-up sequence to proceed to pitch the deal.

From right here it’s a matter of writing compelling emails.

More often than not I used one thing like:

The physique of the e-mail is essential. It wants to be brief, snappy, and never ask for an excessive amount of. It’s essential to pique curiosity however not give every little thing away. The aim is to merely to advance the dialog, not to land a deal.

The ask was simply to get on a Zoom name to discover out if we had a proposal that may swimsuit them, speak them via their wants, and see if we might assist. I additionally used shortage by limiting the variety of sponsors we might tackle.

That needs to be the aim of your outreach. Get an open. Get a response. Transfer the deal ahead one step.

The Deal

When asking for $5,000+ from strangers, you’re going to want to put in some face time. After utilizing Contactually to comply with up, the subsequent step was to have a video name with them.

This could get messy. They had been busy. I used to be busy. Time zones didn’t work, and keep in mind I had about 200 individuals in the beginning pipeline. Working in Australia and refusing to do midnight calls to Europe or the US significantly restricted me.

Learn Extra: 30 Skilled Tips about How to Get 10k Extra Followers on Instagram

Once more, that is the place I had expertise do the heavy lifting for me.

I used a superb scheduler known as Calendly. It allowed me to simply have individuals e book in a time with me (once I was free), add it to my calendar, ship reminders, and even drive them to pre-qualify by filling out a type. Simply superior. Extremely advisable.

From there, I’d speak to individuals on Zoom. Generally due to the time distinction, I’d be doing it from my automobile as I drove into work.

The most effective method was to see it as a “partnership” and never a gross sales name.

The decision construction was mainly:

• Intro and pleasantries
• What do you guys do?
• What would allow you to (what do you want)?
• Right here’s what we’ve (with good homework this could match what they want)
• The shut (are you ?)

Publish name:

• Subsequent steps (summarize the decision on electronic mail)
• Attain an settlement and ask them to buy through Kickstarter

There was no sneaky gross sales script. Being genuine works properly, however you continue to want to guarantee they perceive the worth of what you’ve and the way that may assist them.

So there you’ve it, easy!

Not essentially straightforward. However it may be performed.

Key Takeaways:

1. Do your analysis (have an incredible deal for the best particular person and it’s straightforward)

2. Use expertise to leverage your time (I solely spoke to about 10-15 certified individuals)

3. Take a look at, measure, refine and at all times deal with worth

You’ll have one thing of worth that different individuals need. Don’t beg for something, put collectively a sizzling deal, and success is assured.

Advertising and marketing Stack

Right here’s a listing of the entire SaaS instruments I used and suggest should you want to discover and shut offers in a rush.

• Discovering Contacts: LinkedIn
• Buying Contact Particulars: Sellhack
• Itemizing Prospects: Google Sheets
• Contacting and Monitoring: Contactually
• Automated Scheduling: Calendly
• Videocalls and conferences:  Zoom, GoogleMeets

What Actions Ought to I Get Sponsored?

Now that you simply perceive how to get sponsors, it’s time to study what enterprise actions you pursue for sponsorship.

Whereas you will get sponsors for nearly something in your online business, that doesn’t imply it is best to. You don’t need your model to appear like a inventory automobile lined high to backside with sponsor stickers.

So, listed here are the actions we recommend pursuing sponsors:

• Reside occasions
• Webinars
• Conferences
• Podcasts
• YouTube channel
• Particular version books, prints, or designs
• Signage or actual property

Bear in mind, sponsorship is a two-way relationship, and there are expectations once you get a cost. So, one-offs or short-term sponsorship contracts are a greater manner to begin in the sponsorship sport than pursuing year-long partnerships since you by no means know if the connection will flip sideways.

For instance, we examined out a sponsor for our podcast, however the advertisements didn’t find yourself performing, and the back-and-forth with the sponsors sucked time and power from our workforce. We determined to pull the plug on the sponsorship and as an alternative promote our product, foundr+, on our podcast as a result of it’s extra related and acquainted to our listeners.

Generally, the most effective sponsor is your personal.

Sponsorship FAQs

How do I get round gatekeepers?

Do not take into consideration gatekeepers as a task to get round, however a device to land a gathering. Whether or not they’re a employees member or assistant, your first interplay with a gatekeeper will set the tone in your ask. So get to know them, ask questions, and be clear about your alternative. Gatekeepers can do greater than e book a gathering. They will advocate in your behalf.

When ought to I cease asking for a sponsorship?

Use your finest judgment studying the room or digital room. A prospect may by no means say no to your face, however they’ll trace with verbal and non-verbal cues on whether or not you are pushing an excessive amount of. In distinction, do not hand over after one name. As an alternative, make sure you’ve answered all their questions and have completely defined your worth as a possible associate.

How lengthy ought to my sponsorship pitch be?

Your pitch ought to solely introduce your sponsorship alternative. When you’ve already laid out the sponsorship worth in an electronic mail, a verbal pitch ought to take at most 10 minutes. That may be performed with a brief slide deck, whitepaper, video, or drawn on a whiteboard. Then, go away loads of time in your prospect to ask questions and focus on partnering in-depth.

Get Sponsored and Begin Constructing

Find out how to get sponsored, shut offers, or construct your online business with our all-access cross to programs, neighborhood, and extra. Join Foundr+ for $1.