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if you're in the process of creating a sponsorship package then you've come to the right place my name is Chris Bayliss president and CEO of the sponsorship collective and in this video we're gonna do a step by step walkthrough of exactly what you should include in your sponsorship packages before you dive in though make sure you hit the subscribe button and click the bell icon enjoy [Music] welcome to sponsorship packages that work learn exactly what sponsors want to see surrender what sponsorship packages again this is me Chris Bayliss presidency of the sponsorship collective self self-proclaimed sponsorship geek and basically you know I run the sponsorship collective we're a consulting firm whose main focus actually is on sponsorship valuations building strategy and in helping clients ultimately secure more sponsorship dollars and we take on clients in Canada and the US but our education products I suppose are actually consumed or used by people from all over Canada United States Europe Australia and New Zealand so so what I bring to you today and in this session really as a result of that experience and and I offer it to you as as something that's worked well for me and that that I hope will work well for you so this what we're gonna do today we're actually gonna walk through the sponsorship deck structure and we're going to use I'm gonna use that as a way of educating and sharing with you best practices kind of section by section and then I'm going to show you a sponsorship deck that I had designed using like one of the one of those online designers for a couple hundred bucks you know for the for the price of a survey tool and a couple hundred dollars in design I was able to in an afternoon create a sponsorship deck using these principles for very little money that will serve the exact purpose of the sponsorship I I could which is to get people to agree to meet with you not to make the sale so but you already know that from from the earlier session today so anyway this is what we're gonna talk about today okay so let's talk about the sponsorship deck the most misunderstood and I would argue poorly use tool in sponsorship you can do sponsorship without a sponsorship deck but a sponsorship deck alone is not enough to do sponsorship so I think that we obsess over sponsorship decks we think it's the most essential thing to sell sponsorship it is not so there it can certainly serve some valuable purposes but but honestly I think it's overstated how important the sponsorship deck is so so keep in mind that sort of backdrop as we go that framework as we go so what is the purpose of the sponsorship package to make the sale to get people to cut out one of those little-little like fill and fill in this box if you want this sponsorship and send us a check at the bottom is no it's not to do that at all the real purpose of the sponsorship package is to outline your audience define the opportunity drive your prospects to you so that you can sell them live in person or on the phone and it can be used to outline discussions that you've had with prospects using the results of the discovery questions in other words the sponsorship package itself is a tool to get prospects to talk to you the real sales tool is not to actually make the sale so that might be shocking to many of you some of you may be thinking yeah you know that I get it but wouldn't it be great if the sponsorship package could make the sale anyway you know this guy doesn't really know he's talking about believe me when I tell you if the sponsorship package makes the sale you're undervalued and you've left money on the table and that's that so it does not make the sale it does not include a grid like gold silver bronze or any other name it does not include a cutout to be included with payment right fill this out check a box send back a check it does not try to guess at what your sponsors want the sponsorship package should include and about Us section audience data lots of audience data it should describe some of the opportunities that you offer I'm going to show you you're gonna see exactly what I recommend and includes the ask it's not what you think and it includes a strong and well-written call to action so let's start with the about us page what should you include in the about a section of a sponsorship pitch deck well if you are a charity you probably have your mission vision history biography of the CEO or a board member pictures and pictures and pictures of the people you're going to help and a bunch of stuff about how many people or kids or animals or whatever you've accomplished that is a phenomenon specific to the charitable sector that simply doesn't exist anywhere else everywhere else talks about on the about us page a really short introduction to who we are and then it goes into audience data so the about Us page is really meant to be a very very simple introduction short is good very short is better biographies mission vision cause know that don't I don't include any of that stuff other than maybe a like a sentence or two about what my organization is sponsors aren't sponsoring your organization they're not contributing to your mission they're not helping the Montreal Canadiens win more hockey games or the Oakland A's win more baseball games they're interested in connecting with your audience so if your sponsorship pitch deck is focused on anything other than audience you are focusing on the wrong things so I say no more than one page or one paragraph you see that the deck that the template and the deck that I'll be sending you will actually be in PowerPoint that I prefer PowerPoint versus a like a like a design brochure but but I'll leave it to you to decide but my preference is most definitely PowerPoint so paragraph or less in a nice big font that's it so we've moved on from the about Us page this is the name of our organization this is a sentence or two about who we are now check out our audience check out the event or the opportunity and check out the audience that is involved in this so I know that the about us section often acts as a stand-in for lack of audience data right we'll put six seven eight pages all about who we are and why them with the strength of our brand as a cover for the fact that we don't actually know who our audience is aside from families or everyone or whatever so we're actually gonna flip that on its head completely audience Donna is without question the key to high value sponsorship so again while this is not designed entirely for charities it's important in particular for charities to know that your cause is irrelevant in sponsorship I know that you don't want to hear this and that it comes as a surprise because when you're doing any other type of fundraising your cause is highly relevant so just to clarify your cause is relevant to your audience your audience is relevant to your sponsor do not focus on your mission and vision to sell a sponsor focus instead on your audience and what you know about them and why you're on why your cause matters to that audience cause is important to your audience audience important to your prospect you use your cause to attract and define your audience you use your audience to define and attract a prospect now this is true if you're a sport team a municipality a hospital university college it makes no difference you use your opportunity to bring in an audience or a music festival your audience cares about the thing they paid to see or engage with they they don't care about your mission as the event organiser and neither does your sponsor so you use the the the thing that you are offering to attract your audience then you get to know and define that audience and then offer ways to engage with that audience up to your sponsor known as activations and we have a whole section on a workshop I should say just on activations so we're going to go deep into that concept sponsorship by way of reminder is always this right your property brings in an audience audience brings in a prospect never this property does not bring in sponsor sponsorship is about marketing and sales marketing and sales requires an action or a goal right ie someone to make a purchase or someone to walk away with a particular belief or knowledge of a product with an intent to purchase in the future an action or goal requires a particular individual or group of people right you need someone to take the action the verb cannot exist in the absence of somebody taking that action your opportunity needs to be about the audience that you can help take a particular action because audience data is a complex topic we've got an entire session dedicated just to that so hang on for that and we're gonna go in deep stay tuned for more of this in the audience data workshop so just a reminder you might hear along pauses or mutes that is me taking a lot of tip of my coffee and sparing you from the from the noises I have a pretty good mic which means it picks up what I'm told is an incredibly annoying characteristic of mine and that I drink coffee loudly that's what 14 years of marriage will get you a list of all the things you do that annoy other people anyway so now we're going to describe the opportunity right that's what you're going to do in your sponsorship package otherwise known as activation time so we're not going to talk super deep about activations now because we're gonna go in pretty deep in the next section but this is the this is typically what people do what people offer as the gold silver bronze approach right so what do you put in your list of opportunities is it a menu of all the things you have to offer so that a sponsor can go through and pick the things they would like to purchase is it a gold silver bronze does it contain prices what do you put in your list of opportunities well here's what I recommend no grids no lists or menu of assets no pricing the fact that you can put someone's logo on a sign you don't need to put that in your sponsorship package if you're offering them the opportunity to raise awareness among their target audience a logo on a sign may or may not even accomplish that you need to understand what your sponsor wants to do in order to know whether or not they want a logo on a sign right you're gonna offer everyone free tickets it's not relevant unless your sponsor wants those things every sponsor knows that if they want to have free tickets or logo placement or eblasts that it's on offer putting reams and reams and reams of gold sponsors gets six of these and eight of those and 14 of those and silver gets only four it gets half as many it's not relevant to your sponsors and it's getting your sponsorship packages thrown in the garbage instead focus on some of the activation ideas that you have to add value to your audience right your sponsors target customer share case studies about how you've delivered on really cool sponsorship opportunities talk about the outcomes that you can offer sponsors can you help them with brand awareness can you help them with product placement rather than saying we're going to let you give out 500 samples for three dollars and 42 cents though those things are not this is not the time for that once you've delivered a sponsorship package about your audience and you've established with your sponsor that they're highly interested in that audience then you move to the discovery questions to find out whether or not that figure out what it is your sponsor wants and then from there you can build out a custom offering using the valuation and all the things we're going to talk about today so the so what I actually see most often is like five to six pages all about us maybe a passing in passing we have families who come to our event here's a picture of them and then pages and pages of here's how you can give us your money this is the exact opposite of what we should be doing very short very very short about us very very short about the types of opportunities very heavy on the audience data to prove that you can deliver and then have a conversation with your prospects with with your sponsors here's the problem with the gold silver bronze approach at the listing everything right it is the spaghetti method it's based on the false belief that every sponsor wants a little bit of everything right that if you throw everything at the wall something will stick in other words you show your sponsors every single thing they can have they're going to read through the whole thing and decide based on that which things they'd like to purchase it does not work that way you do not want to get into the incorrect thinking that that every sponsor wants a little bit of employee engagement a little bit of branding a little bit of product placement a little bit of whatever it is actually sponsors know exactly what they want in order to drive sales based on the inefficient approach of throwing everything at the wall you do not wanted more is not better better is better within the package a simple bulleted list of the ways you can work with sponsors is enough but once you mean with a sponsor then you can go deep into activation ideas what they truly want and as you start to get to know what your sponsors want then the magic happens and things become worth a lot more right if if you're making them buy something off the shelf you just can't price it very high okay the ask it's not what you think most people on there actually I want you to read ahead most people in their sponsorship pitch decks they they've listed all of the opportunities and then at the bottom there's this thing for you to cut out and send back you know with a check or go online and or provide your credit card information and you will be the proud owner of a silver sponsorship level that is definitely not the approach that we recommend and that that I recommend and it definitely does not work if you're looking at any major sponsorship and and the truth is you don't define what major sponsorship is your sponsor does just because it's only five thousand dollars if that's small to you that may not be small to your sponsor and so they may demand or or just not be interested in sponsoring unless they have a tailored approach so the ask is done in person not in a package you can capture the ask in your sponsorship deck after you've made it right so in other words you've had a conversation with your sponsor they've told you what they're interested in they you've agreed on an amount then you update the sponsorship package to outline exactly what they agreed to right or you can create a sponsorship agreement instead so your initial sponsorship package is really to set up the meeting not prices always custom never based on predetermined levels and it but it requires you to know your value right you have to use you have to do a valuation obviously we have all kinds of templates and for everyone who's here for the for the day you're going to get the valuation calculators and we're going to teach you how to use it but the idea is that you must do a valuation so that when you start to negotiate with your sponsors you'll know exactly how much to charge them and how to justify it and also I'll just flag now that we're starting to see a significant influx of clients who are being sent to us by sponsors brands who are requiring sponsorship seekers to get a third-party evaluation before they'll move forward so brands aren't doing the valuations they're saying they're putting the onus back on you the sponsorship seeker to go and prove by way of a third-party evaluation that that your value is true and so and just as a subjective observation virtually everyone we work with undervalues themselves you're asking for too little far too little so the ask within the sponsorship deck is actually not an ask at all the ask is done in person you can add and ask to the sponsorship package after you've gained a green in person or over the phone if if in person is impossible or if phone is preferred by your sponsor so once you've done a a sponsorship package what do you put in your call to action section write the call to action is the thing you use to get your sponsor to agree to do something now if we've established that the thing you want your sponsor to do is to agree to a meeting then your call to action really needs to be focused on that the what is the saying the Fox that cat chases two birds catches none you don't want to say give us a call let's have a meeting or if you already know what you want just fill this out and send us your money you are not trying to drive anybody at all to giving you money as a result of your sponsorship package you are looking for a meeting with your sponsors with your prospects I cannot stress that enough so what do you put in your call-to-action page I can tell you I've seen some horrifying things at the end of a sponsorship pitch deck or a sponsorship package we're gonna keep it really simple here today short and sweet right short is good very short is very good everything we do is custom tell us more about your sales and marketing goals and we want to make it happen that's it right everything we do is custom let's connect and talk more about your goals one contact person just one one email address and one direct phone line and the phone line that you give them you're going to is the one that you can answer that might be your cell phone it might be your office line but when your phone rings you must answer it right do not put your phone number on a sponsorship pitch deck and have it go to voicemail nine times out of ten right when someone picks up the phone and calls because they're interested in learning more you want to have an instant and immediate conversation why well if your hard to get ahold of during the sales phase imagine what what you'll be like once you've already captured the money that's what the sponsor things right the hungriest part of sponsorship is when you want the sale and you're you can't answer the phone or or be available so one contact person by name you can you can keep the job title if you want unless it's something like director of making companies give us money right or if you're the if you're in in fundraising director of corporate philanthropy I wouldn't actually keep my job title on the sponsorship pitch deck if that were my title you don't want it nobody wants to be sold to so if your job title is something like corporate partnerships or I don't know sponsorship and activation keep your job title but on the on the package but if it's corporate giving and corporate philanthropy Director of Sales I would avoid it so one contact name your direct email and a direct phone number no info add no sponsorship at but Chris add sponsorship collective comm the goal is to get your prospect on the phone or to agree to a meeting right that's what you are looking for so let's look at a sample this comes right out of the audience data that we collect on a regular basis on behalf of our clients this is and then this is something that I I went through like 99designs I think it was like three hundred and fifty bucks and I had ten different designs to choose from so the process of creating and designing a sponsorship pitch deck is it by no means an expensive process it doesn't have to be complex and again you're not trying to convince and it's not sales it's a sales tool but the outcome that you're trying to produce is a conversation with a prospect it is not you trying to tell them everything they need to know to make a purchasing decision on the spot that's what everyone else is doing and everyone else is struggling right you you don't want to be like everyone else you want to be different and unique and and you want to stand out from the crowd so very simple PowerPoint pitch deck that I had put together by like I said a handful of designers who had zero experience in the sponsorship space so yeah check out 99 designs and super easy to use so here it is the nonprofit chair yeah I'm just gonna use a charity run because like 60% of the people who register for today are in the charitable sector so I'm going to show you I'm just gonna use a charitable example if you are in anything other than a charity it's exactly the same process you'll just be the montreal canadiens instead of the nonprofit charity so that's your name that's your logo connect with your target market in a way that speaks directly to them and their interest that's your promise right we're the nonprofit charity not helping kids do XYZ not you know the sponsorship collectives mission to bring best practice sponsorship to the market no I want to help you the brand connect to your target market in a way that speaks directly to them and their interests it's not just boring old advertising your logo placement connecting you to your target market so you're gonna get I mean you could use this exact design if you'd like and just change the change the wording or you're also going to get the template with no design and then submit it to your designer or 99designs and have them create something based on your own branding but I want to show you what it looks like in action okay about us here's the paragraph or two nonprofit charity was launched in 1997 in order to help people we continue to help people through programming that matters in ways that matter and in ways that our donors care about simply put what our mission is to create a world where everybody is happy there's my little my little icons for everyone and happy that's it right word charity we've been around we help people now let's talk about what really matters so we have an event the big run for charity the big run for charity is the signature fundraising event for the nonprofit charity every year over 10,000 people run five kilometers three miles in support of the mission that's it right just a very simple couple of sentences to say we have an event the people who come care about our charity here's what the event looks like ten thousand people one-day event five kilometres of running 15 stations along the route giving out product and samples I don't encourage you to have 15 stations along a 5k route but this isn't a real run 10,000 runners 500 volunteers so I'm lucky if I even see this much audience data in the average sponsorship pitch deck this would actually be considered a lot by market standards but not anywhere near what sponsors need so let's go deeper about our audience starting on the left and then we're gonna go clockwise 27% are 55 and older 32% are aged 29 to 35 76% have two or more children living at home 21% bank with Royal Bank 19% with TD 17% with CIBC 21% drive Toyota Ford Honda Chevy 32% used Rogers 23% AT&T 21% tell us about a quarter make over a hundred and fifty Kay year 48% have participated in this event in the in the past three years right so their repeat participants 63% are female so this would be considered a an extreme amount of audience data compared to what I see in the marketplace most people don't have anywhere near this level of data but we're not done yet in the next 18 months 26 percent of our audience plan a major home renovation 18 percent plan to travel within the u.s. sixty-five percent plan to change their health insurance plans 33 percent plan to buy their first home 79 percent are going to switch cell phone providers 62 percent are gonna go back to university is a pretty bizarre collection of people who are going to have a major home renovation travel and go back to school but whatever 63 percent will rent a car 33 percent will go to Europe 82 percent plan to take some kind of vacation 22 percent will apply for a new credit card now we're talking right now we can actually paint a picture right 10,000 people are gonna show up at our event of which this is who they are this is who they currently banquet these are the current brands that they want to be in that they're involved with here are the things that they actions they plan to take in the next 18 months but we're not done yet our audience is responsive the open rate on email sent to our databases typically 34% with a click-through rate of 15% when asked if our attendees would change a purchase based on sponsorship of this event 87% of them said they would therefore not only does our audience want to hear from us but they want to know who we're working with companies just like yours what good is all of this data if no one cares so you have to be able to prove in some way that your audience will actually change a purchase based on sponsorship that you can affect buying behavior that you can affect that you can actually increase that awareness right and so if your open rate is very very low or non-existent it doesn't matter how big your database is and if you don't know what your open rate is why would a sponsor want to work with you when they can just do straight up digital marketing and buy email lists they don't need you but we're not done yet we have a strong digital presence and an engaged audience fifty thousand web visits every month twelve thousand Twitter followers twenty-one thousand Facebook Likes thirty thousand email addresses in our database eight thousand Instagram followers now these are all vanity metrics but because you've proven on the previous slides that you've got good data about who's coming to your event these vanity metrics which don't really say anything about the types and quality of followers it's not so it's not as much of a faux pas so often what I'll just see is we have ten thousand people coming fifty thousand followers on social media gold silver bronze cut this out and give us your money and we're gonna help lots of people so then you can make the claim here at the bottom we have all kinds of interesting data on our social media following and our digital presence tell us what you're looking for and we can and we can put something together right the social media data is really easy to get and free to get is it's it's available and if you're not sure how to get it then then then honestly just do a google search on on how to find out about your Twitter followers and your your Facebook how to harvest data from Google Analytics like super super easy tons of YouTube videos about it so you've got all this really interesting qualitative data about your audience you've got this really interesting quantitative data and you're telling your your prospect let's talk about what it is you're after because I think I know I can put together a better report or telling about who's in my database if you want to get really if you really want to geek out on this and and I certainly recommend you do go into who actually share that data about your social media followers on the next slide we're not done yet let's talk about our media partnerships we have a media we have media partnerships with XYZ print 1 2 3 FM radio and an exclusive broadcast agreement with channel 71 on the day of the event last year we also saw the following organic media right talk about your previous year's media reach so that you you can look back to predict future exposure right media one media to meet e3 here's some kind of hoods examples because of this we had a combined national media presence of over five million views during the two months leading up to the event so by extension this the audience of these media outlets becomes your audience so it's not just straight up we've got lots of eyeballs you should be involved you're actually talking about some really in-depth interesting stuff about your audience now you're probably thinking right now I don't know any of this stuff how do I get it great show up at the audience data workshop and I'm gonna show you how to get it everything we do is custom we don't use stock packages because we know they don't work we want to create something just for you designed to help you achieve your goals some of the ways that we can work together include naming opportunities on-site activations brand recognition VIP opportunities employee engagement advertising and media presence sampling and product placement experience on marketing in other words we want to hear about your goals and then build something just for you and your budget so I didn't include it in this one but after this is a good place to to talk about some of those sample activation opportunities some of the cool things that you've done maybe some pictures of your event where sponsors are engaging and and working and and showing off their their what what they're doing their products etc so I didn't do it for this one but but this is where you would add some of those examples call to action let's connect we're excited to hear about your goals and how we can help you achieve them get in touch and let's talk about ways we can work together Chris Bayless head of corporate partnerships Chris in sponsorship collective comm and that is not my real phone number obviously so that's a really simple quick easy way to show off your audience data this pitch deck is something exactly this pitch deck actual ball exactly this structure is what I've used for literally for millions of dollars in sponsorship it's so much better than a here's two pages about us a gold silver bronze grid and a give us your money at the following email address so much better than that approach I would encourage you to start to collect maybe you don't have them yet but start to collect examples of like screenshots of social media examples of cool activations or product giveaways or things that you're working on with your sponsors not sure what an activation is well no problem we're gonna go pretty deep into that in in another session so you'll you'll know exactly what sponsors are looking for by way of cool activations so that's it you know if we go back to the beginning you just do a quick run-through title page about us very simple we're right into the event and who's coming then we're going deeper into our audience then deeper into our audience then deeper into our audience then we're talking about our social and digital presence then we're talking about our media partnerships if if this thing was let's go back and count it is one two three four five six seven eight nine it's ten pages of which seven are about audience data 70% of this pitch deck is about audience data in a very simple 10 page pitch deck if you were delivering this in person and walking through walking someone through your pitch then I would actually instead of the let's connect I would share some examples and then put some of those discovery questions in in the package and sit down and ask your prospect to talk to you about the ways that they like to engage in sponsorship [Music]