The Market
Marketing through sponsorship is the fastest growing form of marketing today. In the US alone the sponsorship market was worth US$ 30 billion in 2002, after a 10% growth. This result was achieved despite that the global economic slowdown and the advertising market dropping by 3%. Estimates predict that the sponsorship market will grow 14% in 2003.
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Why is the sponsorship market growing so fast?
If the advertising market actually fell 3% last year, why did the sponsorship
market grow by 10%? Because sponsorship provides a direct delivery system that
makes it possible to incorporate the advertisers’ messages into the action.
Furthermore, sponsorship offers a lot more than ordinary advertising. Here are
some of the most important benefits that sponsorship has to offer:
Heightened visibility
Sponsorship offers multiple
exposure possibilities for as long as the sponsorship lasts. Consumers won’t hit
the fast forward button on their VCRs or flip the magazine page when their
favorite tennis player is serving for the game or telling their life story.
Business2Business: Encouraging trade
Would your
retailers, wholesalers or other links in your distribution channel like to have
tickets to their favorite sporting events? Or have the local sports hero turn up
at their mall or at a convention? These are the kinds of things that may secure
that extra shelf space or boost the sales effort for your product.
Showcasing product attributes
Oil companies and tire
manufacturers sponsor race teams to show what their products can do.
Differentiating your product from the competition
Using
sponsorship for value added promotion in connection with securing category
exclusivity is a powerful way to make your product stand out. For example, a
newspaper or a magazine sponsoring a baseball team can offer a discount on
tickets with every new subscription. This is something unique that competitors
cannot copy.
Driving sales
An example could be sponsoring a local
basketball team, so that every time a customer buys one of your products a
dollar or a percentage goes to the team. This is not only a great way to drive
sales, it’s also a great way to build a good public image.
Challenging larger competitors
Sponsorship is a very cost
effective way of getting publicity compared with traditional advertising. You
might not be able to buy as many ads as your competitors, but a clever
sponsorship strategy can be worth a hundred times more than its initial
cost.
Shaping consumer attitudes
Branding a specific product or
company is another thing that sponsorship is great for. Whether a company wants
a hip, wild and youthful image or a conservative and classy one it’s just a
matter of finding the right sponsorship. Extreme sports such as snowboarding and
surfing are great for establishing a hip image while golf and tennis tournaments
would be perfect for presenting a more conservative image.
Entertaining clients
Taking a client to an event like a
golf tournament or a ball game is a great way to do some informal networking.
This is often one of the only ways to get a client or a business contact to take
a meeting outside business hours. Of course, you have to know what kind of
sports they like.
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Why Use Sponsorhelp
Sponsorhelp can make it easier, cheaper, less risky, and much less time consuming to involve sponsorship in your marketing strategy. Sponsorhelp has developed a service that allows advertisers to use sponsorship in their marketing strategy even if they do not use the services of specialized agencies
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What does Sponsorhelp do?
Sponsorhelp is a service designed to help all the players in the sponsorship market. Our main product is our Match Engine that matches the needs and resources of sponsors and sponsor seekers. Besides our Match Engine we offer a range of services such as reports, analyses and all the general support needed to use our system and to maximize the use and potential of sponsorships.
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How does Sponsorhelp work for sponsors or the agents representing them?
The sponsors or the agents representing them can log on to our system and create profiles in their designated areas. Their profiles are search profiles. The sponsors or the agents create a search profile containing their requirements. The Sponsorhelp Match Engine then matches the requirements of the sponsors with the profiles made by the sponsor seekers and comes up with a list of sponsor seekers rated by how well they match. It is also possible to make quick searches if the sponsor only has very few specific needs.
When a potential sponsor sees an interesting profile the sponsor can ask the sponsor seeker to either release their personal information or make contact. If the sponsor seeker has chosen to make their personal information available for all sponsors to see, they can contacted be directly.
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What kind of sponsorships can I find through Sponsorhelp?
At present, we concentrate on sports sponsorships. But soon we are expanding to all kinds of sponsorships.
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How do I get started?
Register for FREE now by clicking here.
Fill out the registration form and press the
Submit and Continue button.
You will receive a confirmation mail.
You can now create as many search profiles and
make as many quick searches as you like.
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Getting the same for less
Sponsorhelp charges no success fees from the sponsor seekers. This is due to the fact that when a success fee is demanded, sponsorships tend to cost more. Since the athletes need to get a certain amount to cover their costs, the success fee charged by agents and managers has to be added to the cost of the sponsorships. Basically, no success fee means getting the same thing for less.
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What is a profile?
At Sponsorhelp we have two basic types of profiles, the sponsor seekers’ profile and the sponsors’ profile
The sponsor seekers’ profile works sort of like a job application. But instead of applying for a job, you are in fact applying for sponsors. The sponsor seekers’ profile is a preset list of questions developed by sponsorship experts; the questions concern issues that interest potential sponsors and the agents who represent them. The questions concern such issues as Audience Demographics/Psychographics, Media Coverage, Public Awareness and other aspects that would interest a potential sponsor. Creating a profile is very easy. You mostly click on a selection of preset answers rather than writing something yourself.
The sponsor profile is a search profile. It enables an advanced search where you define the parameters and name the profile using, for example, the name of a specific advertising campaign. When the sponsor profile form is filled out you can use it to carry out a search to look for sponsor seekers that offer what you need.
Sponsorhelp can teach both sponsors and sponsor seekers how to make great profiles.
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What is a package?
A package is the product offered by sponsor seekers to sponsors. Sponsorship is not charity. Sponsors do not just hand out money to someone because they need it. Sponsor seekers have to demonstrate that they have something of value to offer. A package could be, for example, the rights to use a sponsor seeker in an ad campaign or the right to put a logo on a sponsor seeker’s shirt. All these rights have a specific price, and when they are combined they make up a package that comes to a certain price. It is possible to make many packages, but we advise that you make between 2-5. One package should include all the rights you have to offer. We also recommend that you offer a reduced package, as it may be easier to sell the smaller packages.
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What does Sponsorhelp cost?
When you register you will be contacted by your own personal account manager who will validate your registration. When you have been validated you will receive all the assistance you need from your account manager. There is an annual registration fee of 4,850 USD.
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Does Sponsorhelp provide additional services besides the match engine?
Besides the subscription to use our Match Engine, we offer a number of
additional services:
Sponsorhelp Sponsorship Analysis Package
Get your
sponsorship possibilities analyzed based on your needs.  Read
more
Sponsorhelp sponsor review package
Sponsorhelp helps you
correct any mistakes in your profile(s) and gives you guidelines on how to
improve them.
Register now and learn more about this package
Sponsorhelp Brand Matcher Package
This package is
designed to improve existing brands or create/build new brands through the use
of sponsorship.
Register now and learn more about this package
Sponsorhelp Full Service Package
Why do it yourself when
someone else can do it for you? We will operate and manage your systems for you
and only pass on information about the best sponsor seekers.
Register now and learn more about this package
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Can you give an example of the Sponsorhelp Match Engine at work?
An international brewery making both soft drinks and beer wants to promote
their soft drinks in their home market.
They need to create a search profile. Criteria for the national soft drink
campaign are: Any sport. Target audience: men and women, ages 10-21. Media
coverage: Specific nation, Subject must have high exposure in TV, magazines and
on the Internet. Public Awareness: High in the specific nation. Specify start
date of campaign. Define the financial parameters of the sponsorship. This
search profile will generate a list of potential sponsor seeker profiles rated
by percent in terms of how well they fit the needs of the brewery’s national
campaign strategy. The brewery can then add the most suitable sponsor seekers to
their favorites/shortlist.
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Will our company’s e-mail address and other information be revealed to sponsor seekers?
No. In Sponsorhelp the potential sponsors (or agencies acting on their behalf) make the first move. If a sponsor finds an interesting sponsor seeker profile that matches their needs and wishes to make contact with sponsor seeker, they can do one of two things: Either send a message through Sponsorhelp’s mailbox system asking the sponsor seeker to contact them, or send a message requesting the sponsor seeker to release their personal information so that the sponsor can contact them.
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