Are Standard Sponsorship Packages Old School?

Standard sponsorship packages are old school!

This is what industry experts tell us...

But the truth is more nuanced than that. 👇 👇 👇

🥇 🥈 🥉 Gold, Silver, and Bronze packages reek of a seller-centric approach to sponsorship sales. They tell the buyer that investment level is the only variable that can be adjusted to meet their needs. 💲 💲 💲

Premier Partner, Major Partner, and Supporting Partner labels kind of come across the same way.

But standard packages are useful for a couple reasons! 👋

1) 🔠 Standard packages give the seller preset starting points to use in your sales conversations. They allow you to showcase a set of options to a brand in order to set expectations around the types of assets you have to offer and the investment levels that you're looking for in exchange for a sponsorship.

2) 🔨 🔧 By having standard packages established, you also minimize the work that might go into customizing every single pitch on the back-end. Then, you can always take that standard package and adjust it as you work through conversations with a prospective buyer.

So what's the best approach?

There's a balance to strike here and it depends on how you sell sponsorship, and how many sales conversations you're having. If you're having a lot of sales conversations, it's nearly impossible to wait on a discovery convo and customize a sponsorship package for every prospect... especially if you're a small or medium-sized rights holder that can't command huge long-term deals from a select set of partners.

And sometimes brands want to see their options early on!

The question isn't whether standard sponsorship packages are useful, the question is which types of standard sponsorship packages show prospective sponsors that you have options to meet THEIR needs.

So, my reco is to build standard packages based on sponsors' needs: "Brand Awareness", "Brand Image Acceleration", "Lead Gen & Conversion", "Hospitality & Experiences". And maybe add in some variations of these packages based on investment levels and/or property or programming focus.

Then listen to the feedback and tailor accordingly!