expert post | the ins & outs of sponsorship

today we have an awesome guest post from our expert partner Nicole Leedham from Black Coffee Communication. she is helping us with finding sponsors for your site, event, product launch etc. this information is so helpful, thank you nicole!

So you’ve got a brilliant idea for a conference, networking event, webinar, product launch, unique service, whatever... - but you need a cash injection.

You immediately think of sponsorship. After all, you’re sure some companies wouldn’t even miss the small amount you need, so how can they say “no”?

Well, very easily actually. What you need to remember is, like advertising, flyers, events and more, sponsorship is part of a company’s marketing mix, which means you need to show a good return on investment (ROI) before most companies will even consider your pitch.

Even those companies that support charitable organisations are doing it because their market research has shown that by being a good corporate citizen, they will improve their own bottom line.

(Although, that said, I did once work for a large utility company that had two “sponsorship” cost codes, one for marketing and one for donations – such as to local schools, community groups and so on. The latter was not subject to the same scrutiny as the former with regards to ROI – but the amount available was also considerably less.)

All that aside, by now you are probably wondering what you can do to show this elusive ROI and catch a potential sponsor’s attention.

Here’s a few tips.

1. As with developing a media kit for your business, focus on what’s in it for the sponsor, rather than for you. So instead of saying, “your $$ will help me attend a conference in Sydney to promote my wares”, say “In return for your $$$, you will get exposure via web advertising, promotion on my blog, social media shout outs etc etc)
2. Give the potential sponsor some options. So, for example, $100 will get them a shout out on your FB page with 5000 followers; $200 will get them the shout out plus a logo on your website with a link to their company; $300 will get them both the above plus editorial in your newsletter which goes to 7000 subscribers. And do your research to ensure your audience is also their potential customers.
3. Check your potential sponsors’ websites to see what other organisations they sponsor. They might even have sponsorship guidelines or sponsorship application forms. This could help shape your proposal.
4. Be aware that most organisations have some kind of matrix that they will use to work out the ROI on a sponsorship, and by doing some background work and offering options (or even the chance to tailor-make a sponsorship package) you might be able to hazard a guess at whether your request will meet the criteria.
5. Remember that companies usually budget on a financial year and that a large amount of the sponsorship bucket will be already committee year to year. If you need a substantial amount of money – or even if you only need a bit – you have to think ahead. In most instances budgets are planned and set around early February for board endorsement in March and implementation on July 1. Only a small amount is reserved for one-off sponsorships (or donations). So if you approach a company in September for an event in November, you are likely to get a knockback. It pays to think about a year ahead, especially if you need the big bucks. Even the big organisations I have worked for don’t have a lazy $10,000 sitting around in the middle of a financial year.

I hope all this helps you in your quest to seek sponsorship dollars. If you have any more questions, please feel free to leave a comment and I will answer as best I can.

Nicole Leeham is the owner of her own little biz: Black Coffee Communications. She specializes in helping small to medium businesses with writing, editing, marketing, public relations and media.

do you have a PR/media/advertising question for nicole. post it or send us an email. your question could become the next 'ask the expert' post!

ask the expert | how to set up a media kit & sell online advertising

today we have an awesome guest post from our expert partner Nicole Leedham from Black Coffee Communication. she is helping us with media kits and selling advertising on your site. this information is so helpful, thank you nicole!

When you make the decision to accept advertising on your website, it can be a bit daunting to work out how to attract the right advertisers (at the right price).

And, there often seems to be approximately 16 kabillion websites competing for that same marketing dollar.

Selling advertising really isn’t much different to selling your thing – it still involves finding your USP (Unique Selling Point), identifying target audience and talking about benefits, not features - so if you start with that mindset, developing your media kit shouldn’t be too hard.

The first step is to develop a media kit to attract potential advertisers.

This needs to be easily downloadable on your web site and you should also do some research to ensure it gets in the hands of your ideal advertisers.

But what should it include? The following four items are a must – the rest is window dressing.

1. Benefits

Start with the benefits to the advertiser - this is THE most important bit of this document. Why should they advertise with you and not one of your gazillion competitors? So perhaps a heading "What you get”.  Then go into what's in it for them - maybe start with something like "We are the largest online distributor of our thing in Australia and more than XXXX of your clients/customer visit our site every week. That means XXX will be exposed to your ad every day, or XXX every hour."

This is infinitely better than saying “We believe in our products because they are the best on the market and we love what we do. We know you’ll like them.” (No offence, but most advertisers don't care about your motivations, and care even less what you think of them. They want to know that their prospects read your site.).

Put simply – features are what your product has or does, benefits are what your customers get from it.

2.  Background

Next, put in a bit of background on your company, but don’t go overboard. And, unless you’ve decided being a micro-business is your USP, try to avoid making your business sound too small – this might scare potential advertisers into thinking you won’t be around for long. Instead, tell them what your thing is, maybe a little bit about why you love your thing.

3. Stats

Now is the time for the facts and figures – a lot of the raw kits I see have this information first, but putting it down a bit will draw a potential advertiser in – then you can hit them with the details. How many hits you get and where from, unique visits or returns etc. Be upfront with this – if it’s not impressively huge, you can let them know how much it is growing each month, and make sure your rates are reflective of your audience numbers. Don’t try and sell a Corolla at a Rolls Royce price.

4. Rates

Finally, put in your rates. Give plenty of options, and list the benefits (not features) of each, so the advertiser can decide on their return on investment.  For instance, offer display click-through advertisements of different sizes, landing page or inside pages, directory listings, newsletter sponsorship, product reviews – whatever suits your niche. And also provide 1, 3, 6 and 12 month options – on a sliding scale. Research what other sites are offering.

Good luck with attracting advertising to your site. If anyone wants me to look over their media kit and make suggested edits, I always love to help small (and micro) businesses. Mention this post and get your kit proofread and edited at 20 per cent off – that’s a saving of $15!

ask the expert | how to write and distribute a press release

Today we have a guest post from our PR/advertising expert partner: Nicole Leedham from Black Coffee Communications.

I am often asked how to guarantee press coverage and my answer is always “it can’t be done”.

What you can do, however, is shorten the odds by

1. Making your press release interesting and engaging; and

2. Targeting it to the right place.

Journalists – especially those with daily (or even hourly) deadlines – work in a hectic environment and their attention span is short. You have about 5 seconds to catch their interest before they move on to the next lead.

A lot of us that read build a little biz are mums, so let me explain something in a term that most mums will relate to – it helps to think of journalists as the toddlers of the professional world.

It’s not their fault, it’s just they are constantly bombarded with information from all sorts of sources and need to quickly sort the wheat from the chaff.

What this means is that not only does your press release need to have impeccable spelling and grammar – it needs a “hook” in the first paragraph.

So forget the flowery language and the “Drawing the reader in” that you would do if you were writing a creative piece, and get straight to the point.

At University, we learnt that this is called the “inverse pyramid” style of writing – the important information is up top and much of the rest is just padding.

Some tips for writing good press releases, and how to get them published:

1. A press release is merely “bait”. Don’t put every single thought you’ve ever had about your business into them. Just the key points that will intrigue the journalist enough to go to your website or to give you a call and find out more.

2. Make sure your name and phone number is at a prominent position at the end of the release so the journalist can contact you.

3. Don’t send releases to the general email or fax address.  Major news media get thousands of press releases every day; you don’t want yours to get lost. Make sure you are familiar with its style, and what journalist has what round. Never send at press release into the ether and cross your fingers. Find the journalist who writes about your subject matter, give them a call, and then send the release directly to them – maybe following it up in a day or so. Or, better still, send them to your community or suburban rag, which loves stories about locals succeeding at something.

4. Find the “angle”. Journalists will probably not be interested in your paintings/photography/whatever as there are hundreds just like you out there. But if you’ve won a national award, or work in a non-traditional field, or even built a successful home-based business as a single mother raising four kids – there’s your story! I recently told a sculptor friend that she needed to sex up and drape herself across her huge metal creations for a photo opportunity. I was only half joking.

5. Think about sending your releases via PRWeb, a Web-based service which automatically sends uploaded press releases to online newspapers and bloggers. You may not get anything, but if you put some backlinks into your release, it could help with search engine optimization.

6. Sign up to  SourceBottle and/or HARO (Help a reporter out). These are great sites where journalists post “call-outs” to people in order to interview them for a story or feature. Recent ones that have landed in my inbox have been asking for some who works in a non-traditional field, and one for event planners with juicy tidbits.

No matter what you do (or what you pay someone else to do on your behalf), there’s no guarantee that sending a press release will result in media attention. If you want guarantees, buy advertising space.

But you can reduce the odds (and, in the interests of self-promotion, it does help to have someone that knows the ropes write the release for you, or at least fine-tune your words.

Nicole Leeham is the owner of her own little biz: Black Coffee Communications. She specializes in helping small to medium businesses with writing, editing, marketing, public relations and media.

do you have a PR/media/advertising question for nicole. post it or send us an email. your question could become the next 'ask the expert' post!

ask the expert | dubunking fears and myths about PR & advertising

Today we have a guest post from our PR/advertising expert partner: Nicole Leedham from Black Coffee Communications.

Welcome to my first blog post for build a little biz. I am very excited about demystifying public relations and advertising for small businesses. After all, I’m a small business myself and I too struggle with some aspects (bookkeeping anyone?).

So, I thought the best way to start would be to debunk some myths about PR and Advertising. Which, by the way, are two very different beasts.

Public Relations

Let’s talk about Public Relations first, and what it is not.

PR is not sending out a bucket load of media releases into the ether, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

Nor is it standing around in skimpy outfits in nightclubs handing out free samples.

And it is definitely not glamorous, or exciting.

Building relationships

What it is about is establishing relationships with stakeholders. This might include customers, media, licensing and regulatory agencies, suppliers, neighbours and more.

These relationships mean that when you do have something to say, people listen.

Let’s imagine, for example, that you have an online service that supports small businesses. Probably the best type of PR in that scenario is word-of-mouth (either on- or offline). A happy client will tell others about you.

Collect these testimonials and use them on your marketing material. Third-party endorsement is the best PR you can get.

As for media, you also need to do some research so you can target your news releases. There is no point sending out a general release to the general email address of the nearest metropolitan paper. They get thousands of these a day. You need to discover which journalist writes about small business and contact them personally.

And never underestimate the power of local media or trade journals. The former lap up stories of “local kid done good” and the latter is often crying out for decent content.

None of this has to be expensive - although if you are not a writer and want to prepare a press release, or submit an article, I suggest it is worth investing in someone who writes for a living and knows how to get your message across.

But if you have built a relationship with the journalist, getting the story printed will be a piece of cake. It’s the cultivation that takes time and effort.

Advertising

Advertising is not (always) big bucks for mass media campaigns targeted at a broad audience.

Nor is it a guaranteed return on investment – especially if it is not done properly.

Advertising is about being clever with your marketing budget – and it is just one component of that budget (which might include sponsorship, flyers, trade show exhibitions and more).

Granted, the likes of Coke and McDonalds have more money to throw at mass media advertising than most of us will see in a lifetime, and they wouldn’t be doing that if they weren’t seeing results. But for small businesses, success can come far more cheaply.

Again, don’t underestimate the local rag. If you are, for example, a solo tradesman, or a cleaner, you will likely get a great response from a small, targeted classified advertisement in your neighbourhood throw-away.

In kind

Some smaller, niche publications also offer “in kind” advertising space. Maybe you have a service that you can “trade” to get your branding on someone else’s website or flyer?

Another great option is “pay-per-click” online advertising, where you don’t pay a cent unless a person “clicks” on your ad – and you can set a daily maximum.

While this is a very broad-brush post that hopefully makes PR and advertising less daunting to you, future articles will go into more details on specifics.

What questions do you have about PR and advertising for your little biz? Please comment below and I will answer the best I can. Your questions will help me with future blog posts so I would love to hear from you!  

Nicole Leeham is the owner of her own little biz: Black Coffee Communications. She specializes in helping small to medium businesses with writing, editing, marketing, public relations and media.

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