How to Approach Companies for Sponsorship – 7 Must-Do Steps

Firstly, it’s important to highlight that you do not need hundreds of thousands of subscribers or followers to make money from sponsorships. What’s important is that the audience is engaged and within a niche where they will be interested in the type of companies you are working with.

Many content creators are put off approaching companies for sponsorship because they feel they need to get to a certain level.

Let me tell you that getting 4 high-profile sponsors for an event in a pub in central London, with an attendance of approximately 150 people, was easier than expected. This experience will be shared with you, but from an online perspective since that’s where we’re creating content today.

So, let’s get into how to approach companies for sponsorship.

Find the right company aligned with your audience

Your audience needs to be the company’s target audience. This is truly the sweet spot for a company where they see the people within your community who they want to attract to their product.

The sponsorship will not work if your audience does not align with the company. It’s obvious, really; would a community of iPhone fanatics be interested in the latest Samsung mobile phone. Of course not.

We rave about how important it is to focus on a niche and know your audience. An engaged audience will drastically increase your chances of acquiring sponsorship, no matter how big.

It’s not just about choosing a company aligned with your audience. You need to love the brand that will be promoted. Focusing on a product or service you already use and have previously mentioned in the content will help you sell it to your audience.

Do not ruin the trust you have built by working with a company that does not meet your standards or is not ethical to your beliefs. Spending time finding the right company is an important task when looking for sponsorship.

Build relationships through networking

Once you have identified your first company to approach for sponsorship, it’s time to network with them online. We recommend focusing on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.

Going back to my experience organizing an offline event in Central London with high-profile companies within the travel industry. Over time, a relationship had been built with these companies on Twitter.

Don’t jump into their DM’s or send a cold email because this will not work.

Most content creators will not do this, but when you’re building an audience, you should also be working on networking with companies that can help you monetize your community and content in the future.

Look where the company is most active online and engage with its content by answering and asking questions. Spend time getting to know the company and the products or services they sell.

Engagement will attract their attention; at this stage, they will check out your community and start to engage back. Once you see constant communication with the company, it’s time to move on to the next step.

Create a media pack

The media pack will be an essential tool for approaching companies for sponsorship. It should be easy to read and scan through. You need to include information about yourself and the community you have built. Tell an exciting story that would make them sit up and listen.

Share how your content has helped the audience you have built. Ensure you include information about your niche, the journey you take your audience on and why you feel it would be a good fit for you to collaborate.

Really focus on making sure that you get across that you share an audience and why sponsoring you would be the perfect fit.

We use Canva to design our media pack because it removes the need to hire a graphic designer, as the templates are straightforward to work with.

Proven data is a must to build trust

Within the media pack, you need to include proven data.

Anyone can fake their statistics, followers and other vital metrics nowadays. If you genuinely have the engaged audience, you say you do, giving access to an Analytics account or screencasting your statistics on social networks should not be an issue.

Think about the type of data that would help the company realize that your audience is aligned with their target audience. This will depend greatly on where your community is hosted and the type of content you create.

With YouTube, views and comments can be found on the videos, but watch time, and demographic information needs to be demonstrated. There’s very little open data for a website without sharing Google Analytics data on unique visitors, bounce rate, and how long your audience spends consuming your content.

Look at ways you can share and demonstrate data within your media pack.

Create a pitch

You have created a media pack; the next step is to think of a pitch to attract the company’s attention. You will have to spend time researching the company and, in particular, looking at its current business goals.

What products or services are they promoting hard right now, and how can you help them achieve their sales goals?

How will the sponsorship look? Will it be a video series the company sponsors, and you promote them briefly at the beginning and end, but create an advertisement within the middle of the video?

Could the company sponsor your podcast? Will a section of your website or community be sponsored by the company? Will you host a virtual event where the company can get involved and, in turn, promote themselves?

You must get your creative juices flowing to develop an exciting pitch that provides sponsor incentives.

The pitch can be sent in a presentation for them to read through, or you can send them a brief email with an invite to jump on a video call to talk through your ideas on how you might be able to collaborate with them.

Find the right contact

Let’s briefly recap; you have found the right company that aligns with your audience. You’ve come up with a creative pitch to approach the company. You created a media pack which tells the story about you and your community.

The next step is to reach out to the person you are engaging with on social media. Send them a DM and tell them that you would love to work with the company more closely.

Ask who is the best contact to send a collaboration idea. Getting a name and email address will increase your chances of the pitch being seen.

Follow back up

Give the company two weeks to respond and if no communication is received, send them a final email to ask for feedback on your proposal. Not every company is going to be interested in sponsoring you, but at least you took action and looked at monetizing your content.

Hopefully, this article has helped you learn how to approach companies for sponsorship. Do not give up; keep trying to build relationships with brands and reach out to them with creative ideas.