For speakers, keynoters, and seminar leaders who are serious about growing their speaking business through collaboration, sponsorship funds, and influence, one the first few things you must have clarity around is the value that you bring to the sponsor (and their audience).
Clarifying the Speaker/Sponsor Relationship:
When corporate sponsors invest time, in-kind contributions, and sponsorship funding or dollars into your big dreams and projects, they are looking to get return on investment.
You see, sponsorship is a marketing relationship where the sponsor is helping you (e.g. contributing cash and other resources or products to your projects), but you are also helping them.
More...
Once you are clear on the ways you can (and cannot) help a sponsor you will have a much easier time exchanging ideas with sponsorship decision makers.
Clarifying What Speakers Can Offer Sponsors:
Recently when leading a Raise a Dream event for speakers, Charmaine facilitated a brainstorming exercise that consisted of having the speakers, trainers, and seminar leaders who attended the event create a list of how they could support sponsors who were interested in getting in front of that speaker’s audience.
Below are a few of the many value benefits they created. You may want to make note of the collaborations that could work for you:
- Creating media opportunities that mention sponsors
- Speaking for the sponsor’s employees, clients, or at one of their events
- Providing content for employee newsletters, all staff emails, workplace bulletin boards, etc.
- Generating social media recognition, sharing the sponsor’s relevant (to your audience) content, and engaging on the sponsor’s posts
- Broadcasting Facebook LIVES and championing sponsors in the video
- Hosting a webinar for the sponsor’s team(s) or client(s)
- Adding the sponsor’s logo to your website and marketing materials
- Including a story about sponsors in your speaker presentations (a content-rich story that is relevant and helpful to your audience or the audience that the sponsor is interested in)
- Adding stickers on your books indicating that a sponsor has purchased/sponsored
- Weaving their name into your bio and introduction that gets read from the stage (e.g. “Charmaine has presented for and partnered with companies like ‘xxx’...” (mention their name, not that they are a sponsor)
- Making introductions for sponsors with relevant connections in your inner circle
These are a few of the many ways you can bring sponsors value and make the sponsorship process work for everyone involved.
It takes a team to raise a dream... For more sponsorship support, visit our Sponsorship Essentials program so that you can learn how to generate revenue from sponsors!
