This article commemorates the 20th episode of our Marketing Your Attraction podcast [cheering in the background), and its topic is evaluating sponsorship opportunities. This is something Philip does all the time when he’s looking at how to make Gantom stand out in the market, what conventions to go to, what partners to work with, and what sponsorship opportunities to pursue. So, Philip began the conversation by stating, “When considering sponsorships and partnerships, the first thing is to think about an overall strategy. Are you in mass marketing or are you doing targeted items? If the market you’re looking at is saturated, and you’re at that level where you can pay for that mass-marketing approach, your evaluation will be different because you’re looking for that name and brand exposure. However, if you’re trying to do individual sales, you’re working on a smaller segment. If it’s a pool that’s too big for you to saturate to that level, you’re doing more direct selling,” he explained.
Finding the Right Match in a Sponsor
“With Gantom, we’re looking at being in the larger themed entertainment or architectural space, but we’re not a large manufacturer in that context. So, we’re looking for those direct sales. This means we have to get a little creative. The approach of sponsors is basically, ‘Here’s our media kit and here are our packages.’ You just pay your money and put your logo somewhere. I don’t ever like to do that. It doesn’t help Gantom, because we’re not really in that mass-market play. I have to look for different opportunities or move the opportunities around, but that depends on your market. I’m sure Knott’s Berry Farm has just done a logo play or a branding play for recognition’s sake.”
“Definitely, yeah,” replied Brad. “And, to your point, at Knotts, we’re trying to reach millions of guests, so we do a lot more mass-marketing stuff, and there are only so many opportunities to reach people through digital marketing. When you’re looking to reach millions of people, that’s when you go into more of the traditional marketing like TV, radio, and sponsorship opportunities. You’re not always able to track them, one to one, but there is, at that level, a reason to get your brand and your logo out there, because you’re competing with Disneyland, Six Flags, and other big parks. You want to make sure your brand is out there as much as your competitors’ brands are—or at least as much as your marketing budget can afford,” he pointed out.
“On the flip side, it doesn’t necessarily make as much sense for smaller attractions to pursue some of those opportunities like just sticking your logo on something. We’re always wrestling with this, because there are so many sponsorship opportunities out there. We probably get two to three a week at Knotts, if not more, for everything from different universities to sports teams to conventions. There’s a lot of noise out there, and it’s sometimes hard to cut through it.”
Vet the Sponsor
“Brad illustrated it perfectly,” said Philip. “When you’re in that mass-marketing game, you’re getting pitched all the time. So, I’m going to go through a checklist and some examples of how to figure out this sponsorship business. Number one: Are you vetting the potential sponsor properly? The first step in vetting is reviewing their media kit, which—to use a hiring analogy—is like a resume. Are they giving you real numbers, and are they transparent about their distribution? I always get leery of shows, magazines, trade shows, or even radio that don’t have credible numbers. They use adjectives like ‘largest,’ ‘premier, ‘or things like that, and they don’t tell you the actual numbers. If their marketing is weak from the get-go, that’s not a good sign. As a marketing professional, you should be able to evaluate that. Do they have a clear understanding of who, exactly, their audience is and what they do to serve them? Can they communicate it? Do they have real numbers to back it up? I’d rather go with someone who gives me all that, straight up, so we can make an informed decision, rather than somebody who maybe isn’t forthcoming. If they say they have sixteen-thousand attendees, you need to be clear what they mean by an attendee. Did someone audit those numbers? With magazines, find out their actual subscriber numbers. To whom do they distribute? What countries do they reach? Find out all that kind of stuff and get the real numbers. This is what I look for in a media kit—the details of exactly what the content is and where it’s going,” stated Philip.
What Does the Sponsor’s Website Tell You About How They Do Business?
“The next thing I look at is their website. Is the website updated, is it responsive, do they have good meta descriptions on their pages? Do they have site maps, privacy policies? Do they have trackers? Do they have good tagging? The way I look at it—and maybe this seems like a weird lens—if you’re hiring these people or doing a partnership with them to market on your behalf, you have to make sure they’re actually good at marketing—which means all those things we talk about on our podcasts. Do they have a good message? Do they have good calls to action? On the flip side, if they do content with you, and it doesn’t have any of those optimizations in it, it’s not going to serve you well at all. So, always check all that information. With a tradeshow website, I want it to be updated but it doesn’t have to adhere so much to some of these other items. If it’s a media brand, I’m really strict on making sure they check all the boxes,” he said.
Do They Have a Social Presence, and Does Your Content Make Sense in Their Feed?
“The next thing I look at is their social presence. We talked about this before, and it’s the same type of principle we use for evaluating influencers. They may have a lot of followers, but do they post regular content that’s useful—i.e., could you see your brand fitting in with that content and getting value out of it? Are people reacting and having conversations, or are they just paying? Look at their creative and see what kind of ads they do. You need to vet them from that standpoint as well to assess their whole performance online,” advised Philip.
“Another question to ask yourself is, if you’re partnering with them to gain a social component, would your content make sense in their feed? Based on the content that’s performing well on their page, is your stuff going to perform well on their page? Does it fit? For example, if it’s a Halloween fan page, what types of Halloween fans are they, and what types of posts are they getting excited about? Is it how-to, is it shopping, is it costumes, is it makeup? Do you fit within that context, and is what you’re offering useful to those fans?”
And, Most Importantly, Contact Referrals
Philip continued, “The last thing on vetting is referrals. Just like with hiring, did they give you a list of clients, and did you call and talk to any of those clients to see what working with them was like? Did they do a good job? How easy was their team to work with? Referrals tell you a lot. Really, they do. You can’t find out this kind of information from their pitch text. I’ve had experiences of going through the pre-vetting checklist and initially not being impressed, but then I did a referrals check and got feedback like, ‘That’s the one party that everybody goes to and, if you’re not there, it’s an issue.’ If you get that kind of response, you can re-evaluate. That’s why it’s so important to check referrals,” he said.
Make Sure a Potential Sponsor Reaches Your Target Market
“After vetting, make sure they truly reach the market you’re targeting. We all target multiple markets, but, when you’re considering a partnership, you should choose one market and ask if the partner hits that market. Using some Gantom examples, there are magazines that do architectural lighting, and they think there’s crossover because we have an architectural line, but that’s not our focus. The people we want to reach are the influencers from the LED and controls side. So, there’s not a good pairing there, because those people read a different magazine to find what they’re looking for. I know that, because I asked them where they’re getting their information,” said Philip.
Focus Your Calls to Action and Simplify Those Steps
“So, after you match all that up, make sure you’ve focused your calls to action and simplified the steps. I see this get messed up all the time, and I notice it because I’ve sold sponsorships, too. Make sure your calls to action are laser sharp. Understand why you’re doing the partnership and what you’re trying to get out of it. I have a few examples of focusing on the call to action and engaging the audience to answer that call,” he said.
“In the Halloween market, we get requests from fan shows, and that call to action can get blurry. Is the call to action to purchase the item or just to become aware of the brand? What’s the purpose of that? Gantom doesn’t sell direct, and some of the shows that come to us and ask us to do sponsorships and contribute our logo have packages and want editorial or news. Since we don’t sell direct, this isn’t useful, because there’s not a clear call to action. If someone sees this logo or this news update, what action are they supposed to take? However, if we flip it around, we might say, ‘We’re going to sponsor a tech design troop to enter a competition.’ We did this. We sponsored a team of student designers to go to Switzerland and allowed them to take the lights with them and use them in their competition. There’s a clear call to action there for us: Here are the lights, and here are designers that have worked with these lights,” Philip explained.
Make Sure the Sponsorship Option Ties Back to the Why
“The next thing I look at is making sure the sponsorship ties back to the why of what you’re trying to accomplish overall with your marketing plan and your strategy for the market you’re targeting. We’ve talked about this in previous podcasts and articles. Is the why to make people aware of your brand, to sell tickets, to encourage direct purchasing, or is it an influencer play? Are you trying to win over early adopters, or are you trying to bring it into mass? What, specifically, are you trying to do?” he said.
Create Your Own Custom Partnership
“As someone who’s worked on this angle and tried to sell sponsors as well, I’ve become aware that what’s in the sponsor kit is never the entire sponsor kit. It’s usually the lazy thing—the options that person or company has thought of. However, if they’re a good partner now or may be in the future, or a good someone to sponsor, there’s probably a way for you to figure out a custom sponsorship outside of what they’re offering if what they’re offering doesn’t make sense to you. An example of this is the Halloween Party Show in New Orleans that we do in January. On the face of it, their opportunities aren’t that useful to us because it’s mainly for wholesaler retail. We have a retail brand, but it’s not the right market for that retail brand, so it’s kind of a miss, but we sat down with their VP of marketing and came up with some better ideas of what to do,” said Philip.
“One of those ideas was to partner to put together a main-stage presentation, partner to get the influencers they need and we need to have more of a conversation with, and have an opportunity to introduce them to our brand. So, it’s more of a direct-sell play. We took their main offering, which was mass marketing, and adjusted it into a way for us to add value by switching it into more of a direct play,” he said.
“So, I’ve been doing all the talking here. What would you add, Brad?”
“I was hoping you were going to forget about the referrals, so I could contribute that!” Brad replied. “Everything you mentioned is really important, but the referrals are key. If you ask for a referral and are greeted with silence on the other end of the phone, or you don’t get that promised email for a day or two, that’s usually a big warning sign that, either they’re new, they don’t have a great reputation, or they just haven’t thought about that question before, all of which are—”
“Not good,” Philip chimed in. “You have to put your brain outside of it and consider, ‘If I was working for these guys, and I was on their marketing team, what would I do? Where are the holes?’ Then you have to think, ‘If they have these holes that are so transparent—i.e., they’re not even bothering to get referrals—is that going to be good for them to quasi-market my brand through sponsorship? Are we actually going to get value through that?’”
Look for the Passion
“I try to look for partners that are excited to work with your attraction or whatever you’re doing,” offered Brad.
“Oh, yes, that’s very important,” Philip agreed.
“And not just for money,” Brad observed. “Sometimes it’s hard to put into words what that excitement is, but you know it when you see it. It’s not like they’re leading with, ‘Here’s my press kit, and here’s how much everything is,’ but with, ‘These are the options I think would work best for your brand.’ As you mentioned, a lot of sponsorship opportunities are flexible, and I always love partners who say, ‘This is what I think would work for you, but let me know if you think it doesn’t. I want to find a way to work with your park/attraction/whatever it is.’ When there’s excitement and passion on both sides, those are the partnerships that tend to work well,” he said.
“At Knotts, Food Beast was a great partner to work with,” Brad continued. “They were always coming up with ideas that excited both of our audiences and worked for both of us. They’d say, ‘Let’s figure that out first, and we’ll figure the money thing out second.’ I always appreciated that. Another really good partner was Crypt TV, which we did a partnership with last year at Scary Farm. It was the same type of thing. It wasn’t, ‘Here’s how much things cost, so pick one.’ It was, ‘Let’s figure out what you want, what we want, come together, and think about this.’ I always ask partners to brainstorm and pitch me on a few different ideas. If they’re not willing to do that, it’s not going to be a good partnership. If they won’t put in a little bit of work in the beginning—”
“If they say, ‘Everything’s written down in the sponsor kit,’ and that’s the end of the conversation, that certainly makes you go, ‘Hmm,’” said Philip.
“I get the feeling they don’t care about my business. Either they don’t need it, or they’re just looking to make a quick buck and not have that lasting partnership,” said Brad.
“And there’s a mindset that tips you off,” added Philip. “It’s like what you said about whether teams are excited or not. There’s this idea from the book, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip and Dan Heath, which is ‘Do you have a problem mindset or a potential mindset?’ When you frame it like that, you can clearly see it. When you’re considering opportunities with a partner, do they have a lot of problems or is the focus on the potential? What angle are they coming from? If they’re coming from a problem angle, it’s going to be hard to win them over to seeing the vision side of it.”
“Yeah, and that’s only going to continue once you sign that deal,” observed Brad. “Buzz Price said, about working with Walt Disney, that Walt always wanted a ‘yes, if’ person, not a ‘no, because’ person. I think about that all the time in all aspects of business, but especially partnerships. If they’re telling you ‘no’ early in the process, good luck. I’ve worked in a number of bad partnerships and, usually, there were those telltale signs in the beginning,” he said.
Pay Attention to Your Gut
“It’s like a gut thing, too. If you’re not just feeling it, don’t push it,” advised Brad. “There are lots of opportunities, especially for smaller attractions. If I made a bad deal or picked a wrong partner at Knotts, I was never happy about it and tried to learn from my mistakes. When you’re working with that big of a budget, it’s not going to doom your season or whatever event you’re trying to launch. However, for a smaller attraction—where that arrangement is 20% to 30% of your budget—those decisions matter a lot. If it doesn’t feel right, move on. Listen to your gut. Go through all the steps Philip mentioned as well, but there’s that gut feeling, that excitement, that passion you have to consider when you’re working with people.”
Hopefully, some of this advice will help you as you’re thinking about sponsorship opportunities for your attraction. If you have ideas for topics you’d like Brad and Philip to discuss, visit MarketingYourAttraction.com, sign up to be on the email list, get the contact information, and let them know what you’d like them to cover in future episodes.
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