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"The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit." Milton Friedman |
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Sponsorships: extra source of revenue
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As you know, attracting sponsors is not easy to do. Whether it's in a professional or a voluntary context, a certain investment of time and dedication is always required.
A rental go-kart facility has a lot of advertising possibilities to offer. You just have to use the right tools and throw yourself into it!
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Sponsors won't just appear out of nowhere
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| Even when you have a magnificent circuit and wonderful accommodations, no sponsor will ever knock on your door to bring you money!
First, you better start listing all the potential sponsors that you know already: those can be private relations (a friend that runs a company) or professionals (a company client of your karting center).
This is your easiest target group (or the least difficult) to attract.
Second, list the companies that operate in your neighbourhood.
As last, check the internet to find companies by sector, geographical, etc.
This way you can find many companies in a very small amount of clicks.
Once you've drawn up your list of potential sponsors, divide them in multiple categories.
I recommend you to sort them by potential. It might be subjective, but it has 2 big advantages:
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you can test your sales approach to companies with less potential
- this will increase your motivation to approach companies with higher potential
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| Define your commercial offer |
| You have more possibilities regarding communication than you think. The first thing that probably pops up in your mind is the banners next to the circuit. But think about all the digital media possibilities: promotional e-mails, membercards, TV screens, printouts, vouchers/tickets, etc.
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| Cherry on the cake: everything is quantifiable! In fact, you know how often you send e-mails, how many member cards you sell, etc. It's very easy to do simple calculations to show your potential sponsors how often their logo will be seen by customers.
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| Package proposals |
Now you're sponsoring categories are defined and you know what you can offer potential sponsors, I suggest you to create offer packages. For example: Bronze, Silver and Gold.
Each sponsor can now be classified in one of the 3 packages. The advantage is that you'll sell more advertising space (at a discount) instead of one isolated space.
This way your sponsor campaign will be much more efficient.
My further suggestions: don't propose your potential sponsors to do an exchange (example: "I offer you a banner on my circuit and you bring me x crates of beer for free") or at least limit this way of working (example: "I offer you to print your logo on all the race result print outs if you are willing to preprint these sheets with your and our logo)
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| Use a decent brochure |
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You have to make it attractive for other companies to become your sponsor.
To realize this, we'll help you by making a completely personal brochure (more information here). In this file we list all the possibilities regarding sponsorships in a clear and professional way.
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| Arrange meetings |
Sending your brochure by post or email will not be enough! Take time to have some meetings with the right people, take the time to present your circuit and its success, propose your offer and convince them to sponsor you. Answer their principle question:
« what do I gain by sponsoring you? ». Tell them about the visibility (thousands of e-mails sent each year, thousands of visitors to you center yearly, etc.) , your professionalism (your professional image may reflect on their image) and the fact that people will associate your name with their brand.
By now you'll understand that finding sponsors should not be taken lightly. But if you use this opportunity in a correct way, sponsoring can really be a financial boost.
Don't hesitate to contact us for more information regarding this topic!
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The retrospective 2010
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For SMS-Timing B&MI, the year 2010 was a year of innovations. To consolidate our position as world leader in solutions for karting, we developed the following applications:
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Karting LED scoreboard software
Approximately twice as cheap as a classic display, using our software makes the display easier to read thanks to the better contrast and the bigger characters.
- iNet Social Networks
Your karting will be connected to Facebook and Twitter in an intelligent way! Watch the demo-movie to experience this yourself.
- Media Center
The latest addition to our software. It connects with the HDTV display and it allows displaying very rich content (movies, text, sound and pictures) on different screens. Very useful for your promotions, events and sponsors.
Furthermore we enlarged our staff by hiring João from Portugal (read his interview in the newsletter of September) and Tamara from Belgium. Today, our team consists of fifteen people, including 1 Dutch, 1 Portuguese and 1 French (your servant).We also participated several trade shows in Europe: Kart and Race (Brescia, Italy), IKA (Offenbach, Germany), IAAPA (Rome, Italy) and Surexpo (Warsaw, Poland). Finally, our monthly newsletters are a big success, and more and more people subscribe daily (don't forget to find our previous newsletters on our website). The entire team wants to thank you for your loyalty!
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