How to offer sponsorships and co-branding - Part 2
This will make more sense if you're read the first part of this series about offering sponsorships and co-branding on your website.
So I'm going to do my best to address the second issue: Isn't this all just a lot more work for advertisers?
@moreglen and I were having this discussion about sponsorships and whatnot, and he threw out that devil's advocate question.
I mean, instead of just doing some high-reach display ad campaign we've actually got to work. We need to find communities, we need to think up interesting ways to make ourselves valuable, we need to show ourselves interested and invested in these people.
It's exhausting just to consider!
So it's easy to come up with problems, but as I said before about advertising in a down economy, the advertisers and communicators that keep succeeding are the ones that think about these things and do their damnest to come up with cool, new ways to overcome any potential obstacle.
So, of course the first answer to that is, Yes, it's more work, too bad. But a little more work to make a product that's more effective, more interesting, and more helpful for everyone.
The second answer is, Well, isn't there a way to automate much of this?
Think about this possibility: Your marketing department or agency outlines just what type of sponsorships you're able to accommodate. The types of communities you're looking to sponsor, what you can offer, and what the prerequisites are on the part of the publisher/site owner.
Then you set up a site for publishers and site owners. They go, check the list of requirements, and see if their site fits the bill.
If so, they select what types of services/sponsorships/co-brandings would be appropriate for their site, from a list provided on the site.
They submit whatever other terms they have, and a message gets sent to the advertiser/marketer. And then someone is assigned to manage the account from there. That person is also responsible for what we'll talk about in the next post: How can you make sure you're providing an interesting, helpful service to the actual members of the community or site audience?
But all the leg work, the looking for sites, the selecting opportunities, all the more tedious stuff, is placed on the site owner, the publisher.
By doing this you've eliminated a lot of work, and you've shown yourself interested in having more relationships with communities. I mean, you've set up a whole system simply for this purpose.
Right now it's almost always the other way around: Websites put their terms for advertisers, what they require, what they'll accept. But for sponsorships and co-branding's the relationship is necessarily different.
It's closer, it's more delicate.
The site owner and the advertiser need to work together, need to make sure they're a great fit for each other. That should be up to the site owner to assess, as they should know their audience better than anyone else. If not, don't expect advertisers to come in and throw money at you. There's a large burden on you to make sure you're demonstrating a huge interest in your community, and have their best interests in mind.
So that's just one thought about this issue. Got any more? Post a comment, please.
