cwk132

Hi all,

I've recently found myself in an interesting position... I'm a beginner racer (C in collegiate, Cat 5 in USAC) and currently work in marketing for a company that might be interested in sponsoring a local crit series in the future. Bike racers are the kind of demographic we want, but more importantly, if I were to pursue setting up a sponsorship, I'd want to be of some value to the race promoters and racers themselves. What I'm looking for is your opinions on what makes a good sponsor? Do they simply donate money or prizes; do they offer some service or help throughout race promotion and the race itself? I don't know much about putting on races, and how sponsors can be helpful aside from paying money to be able to advertise on the flyers, websites, etc.

Hope your seasons are all going well (I need to do more intervals!)

merlinextraligh

Money. It's hard to find sponsors. Anyone with green is good.


That said, Grocery store chains and convenience store chains make excellent sponsors. These businesses get advertising budgets, and money given to them by their suppliers in exchange for shelf space. The Store can direct some of this money to the Team with the store being the title sponsor, and the vendors being jersey sponsors, without the Store having to use any of its own money. Win/Win for everybody.

My first team was sposored by Go Mart, a local gas/ convenience store, and we worked this model.

My understanding is that 7-11 pretty muche used this approach on a grander scale.

My current team has worked the same thing basically by getting a portion of the advertising budget for various wines brands from a Beverage distributor.

It's always easier to spend Other People's Money. So if you can come up with a program where the sponsor is using OPM it helps.

TheKillerPenguin

merlin covered it.

1. have money, and give it to me
2. don't not have money

Psimet2001 

I have seen a lot of people over complicate the sponsorship thing. Here's the basic facts - it won't work nearly as well as you are hoping it will. If your company is truly targeting the cycling demographic then sure - go for it. Work your ass off to try to get something for the sponsor out of this whole deal. You're asking what the riders want....wrong question. The riders will be there next year. The sponsor most likely won't. Focus on what the sponsor wants. The only thing you need from the sponsor is money.

Don't over promise either party
Be conservative and play worst case scenarios so no one is upset in the end.

carpediemracing 

I can tell you that money really helps a promoter, and anything that helps save a promoter money helps.

So, for example, I paid a lot of money for the sticky-back numbers. A sponsor helped cover those costs, else I'd have been out a lot of money. The same sponsor helped cover primes, giving a lot of merchandise primes (and cool ones at that, like hot off the presses commemorative t-shirts, mechanic's shirts, etc), which saved the promoter prime money. The same sponsor supplied Giro Atmos helmets, saving the cost of buying those for the leaders.

The sponsor is happy. I don't know what defines how happy they are, but they are happy. I hope they got their money's worth in advertising, marketing, etc.

cdr

shovelhd

I'm on the race committee for a road race this summer. One of the club's sponsors is a car dealership. They want to put a feature car in a prominent place so it can be seen. We will be sure to do that. We are also going to ask him if he can provide a few of the race vehicles. He can placard them up all he wants to. Like anything in life, the closer to a win-win situation, the better.

Bob Dopolina 

Bingo.

You're thinking like a ride and not a sponsor.

I've been both and a manager working with sponsors as well.

As a sponsor the most important thing to consider is if your needs and the needs of your team coincide in significant enough of a way. By this I mean they obvoiusly need money (NEVER had a team that didn't) and they need exposure to help them gain more money so can you offer them this? In return, can they offer you what you need which, I assume, is branding within the bike racer demographic?

One card I always play, when courting a sponsor, is the billboard card. All riders are required to wear team kit while training and racing, This gives X amount of rolling billboard time to our sponsors. It is also tied to placement on the kit and certain specific targets within other media like TV, print, internet presence, or social media.

As a sponsor (I am a sponsor BTW) even though we can present you with pretty compitent ROI calculations returns are very hard to quantify. You are much better off doing some dorect promotions like using the riders photos (or doing a specific photo shoot) in print advertising, or using personal apearances for in-house promotions or using riders for other promotions like showing up to call bingo (my hand to GOD I belonged to a team where this was a requirement based on sponsorship).

I don't want to sound like I am pushing you away from sponsorship (Lord knows we can use all we can get) but it really is a mixed bag and quantifying your returns is very tricky.

cwk132

Thanks for the responses everyone, I guess I'll go into a little more detail and pick your brains some more. Admittedly what I'm hearing so far is kind of what I figured would be the case, with sponsorship being a lot of work, not being super effective, etc. I am an intern for a new, small insurance agency. When given some time to brainstorm marketing ideas, I instantly thought about bike racing, mainly because it is a huge passion of my own. My boss liked the idea and has given me the go ahead to look into it further. Admittedly, I'm in a little over my head I feel. My thoughts behind trying to create some value for the riders and promoters was that people would be more likely to remember the sponsor (the company I work for) and maybe check out our website, compared to just giving the promoter some money and having our logo or sponsorship info printed in the race flyer.

I'd love for any more opinions from you guys, or further opinions from those who have already been nice enough to post something. Thanks a lot.

Creakyknees

The value proposition is simple: spend x dollars on sponsorship. Get y dollars back in new business. For a small insurance agency, it might just work - consider the lifetime value of a new insurance customer (thousands of $ easy) vs the cost of sponsoring a series or team (a few hundred, maybe a few thousand).

As noted, make sure your sponsorship makes maximum use of the racer's affinity to support sponsors - make it easy to find and get in touch with you, run ads in local cycling press / association boards etc.

cwk132

Thanks for the responses, I'm reached out to a few local people to discuss the idea of sponsorships, race promotion, etc. further. I really think it would be a fun way to get our [company's] name out and (hopefully) help a community that is important to me.

Happy racing!

Psimet2001 

There's a lot of defeatist talk in here. You're starting to stumble on to what makes some of us unique in life. It's a quality that serves everyone in this forum in some way shape or form. It's the willingness to take on difficult things that others don't want to. To most here that happens WHILE they are racing. For those here like me that happens behind a computer, in a bike shop, or in a Village Board meeting.

Here's the cliff notes - there is no such thing as over your head. You determine how complex or how basic things get.

I used to be intimidated by taking on big endeavors when I was in my 20's. I think that's because I still had what I call the "school" mentality. In other words I somehow thought that at some point I was still "going to learn" about that before trying to do it. Then I figured out that if they taught everyone everything then everyone would do it. Fact is people don't know how to do things 90% of the time. Especially hard or complex things. People just don't want to take the time to learn.

I resolved to just try things. Luckily I have been working for a while so I just think to myself - "If I fail then I'll pay for the education. I paid a helluva lot for the formal one...."

So - what are you looking at? Trying to articulate a value proposition to who? Your boss.

Sure a lot of people can say, "Invest this and get this in return," but in reality that is near impossible to convert or track - even with hard goods/commodities. Let alone trying to track it for insurance sales (something that almost no one would decide to buy WHILE AT the race).

Personally I would focus on the following: The cyclists are your market. By sponsoring you are trying to gain them as customers. Focus on converting them. In general the demographics for cyclists are good as far as purchase power - older, employed, high household income, etc.......but something tells me you were going to focus on guys YOU race with....young, in school, no money....probably a bad idea.

I know that in the Chicago area we, as a community, take supporting our sponsors seriously. We make it a point to eat in the town where a race is held, write thank you letters to the town administration, sponsors, etc. If it is made well known that a particular sponsor stepped up then we make it a point to try to support them. Having an announcer for a series pays for itself in that respect - they plug the sponsor every 3 seconds and if anyone comes away not knowing who the sponsor is well....then they need a hearing test.

Sorry if I'm rambling...

cwk132

Not rambling at all, and I appreciate your responses. You mentioned the demographic thing, and that definitely went into my reasoning. There are some younger collegiate kids that will be racing, but I did actually want to focus on the main cohort that you described earlier of older, higher income, etc. The toughest thing I've experienced with all of this so far is communication. I haven't been able to find one phone number so far for the team promoting the upcoming series that I wanted to sponsor. I finally found an email and have also reached out to a few teammates that have prominent standings outside of just collegiate racing and are active in the racing community as a whole. I'm going to go through with this sponsorship idea as best I can, I feel it's an exciting opportunity and will show some initiative on my part to go out and get this done.

Thank you as well for your support, I'm excited to be getting involved in the sport more than just showing up to get my butt kicked in races!

Psimet2001 

Contact your state racing association (affiliate of USAC) for the promoter's contact info. Also check USAC's website for club contact infor as well as permit infor for previous years as their email will be on there. As a promoter - I hate having people have my phone number and yet they still found it....don't ask me how.

It's up to the promoter to court you once you have expressed interest. If they don't do that well then take the hint that they will probably not serve you well promoting your sponsor when it comes time.

InReverse

What if you just ran some ads in this forum as well as other cycling forums to get a feel for the demographic?

I speculate you'll get a higher reach, as well as a deeper message (due to the ability for an instant visit to the site.)

At the very least, it'll let you get some valuable insight into the demographic.

agoodale

+1 Psimet.

I've been responsible for acquiring sponsorship for our club's yearly race for the past few years. The formula of spend x get y doesn't necessarily work for bike racing. The returns on the investment are not going to be that clear cut. What bike races and bike clubs are good for is building a relationship with a demographic that has money to spend. Bike racers are a tight knit community and good word of mouth about your company's business practices and customer service will get around eventually (of course the downside is bad word of mouth will spread as well). This process may take years to develop. A race or club sponsorship will work best if your boss is interested in cycling and is willing to put in not just the money but the time to let that relationship build. That means sponsoring the race plus maybe showing up to team meetings, riding with the club, etc... The more involved they are the closer the relationship will be and the higher the returns.

Of course you can almost always find a business that will throw a few hundred or thousand dollars at you to help sponsor the race. If the race committee needs the cash that works great. But 1 time sponsorships can be a hassle if you plan on helping the team and/or race for more than 1 year. Finding new sponsorship every year is very time consuming and a hassle. In a small town eventually you'll run out of businesses to approach. So if you think your boss is interested start selling him/her on the idea that this is the start of a long term relationship that will grow over time. That way he/she wont be surprised when the race comes around next year and you need to ask for money again.

cwk132

More great responses, thanks everyone.

I guess more detail will help here. I'm technically an intern (doing everything from administrative assistance, to marketing, etc.) and this project is wholly my own. I would be the "ambassador" for my company throughout this whole thing, and being a racer myself, I would be definitely showing up to the races themselves and to meetings (if applicable) and whatnot.

InReverse, being a very small company at the moment, we're looking to do more local things first compared to advertising on here (which might be a good idea later on, however!). We want to focus on high quality customer service and not just low prices (which is more suited to online advertising, search engine optimization, etc.) My boss also understands that the results of these kind of things are a lot less clear cut and less quantifiable compared to other marketing options; our company is obviously looking to grow our client base, but for my boss this is just as much about me showing the initiative to put together and execute a marketing plan of my own than it is about getting a ton of new clients.

Agoodale - I like your mention of long-term development of a relationship between sponsor and cyclists themselves. I will definitely need to take that into consideration when looking into this more, and discussing things with my boss. I agree with you as well, that a one time sponsorship isn't going to be the most effective, and that developing that "goodwill" with the community through continued support is a more worthwhile thing to do.

InReverse

Sounds like you have the initiative part.

FWIW, you can advertise locally on blogs, and I wouldn't assume that the Internet is for price shopping only.

I'd also mention that from my personal experience, people who advertise in amateur participation sports usually participate in them. In this regard, I think it's drastically different having the intern show up to an event compared to the actual expert/owner/whatever. People aren't really doing business with "Bob" because his intern showed up at an event. IMO, it's more about actually knowing Bob because you had drinks after the tennis tournament/race/competition and wanting to help out his business.

Also it's been my experience with small business owners that they'll let you do what you want until you actually ask them for the check. Then they care to know the details.

Shuke

I'm telling you Charlie: port-a-potties haha. Looks like you're getting a good jump on this.

ManMachine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7cOASl6GKA