As a racer, how can you create engaging conversations with prospective sponsors? To move the needle forward, you need the right sponsorship tools at hand. Fortunately, a well-prepared marketing deck can be half the battle won.
The purpose of a marketing deck is to provide information about your race team’s marketing capabilities for sponsors. Your team’s marketing deck should outline what specific business opportunities sponsors can unlock by partnering with you.
Just as race drivers lean on data to help them gain more speed on-track, your sponsors look into what’s available to them to help them make better marketing and business decisions. A marketing deck opens the door to further conversation.
The key to an effective marketing deck is making it about what your sponsor has to gain. It’s your opportunity to convey to them what types of audiences you can help them reach, how you can get them in front of customers or decision-makers, and ultimately create a partnership tailored to their goals.
In this blog, we’ll run through a few key tips and section ideas that can help you create a more impactful impression with your marketing deck. Or, if you’re thinking about creating your first-ever marketing deck, our expertise below as food-for-thought!
In the minds of a sponsor, your deck’s opening page should establish two things:
Your driver or team bio should be brief and digestible; no more than 2-3 sentences. When writing your bio, consider what key terms can help you craft a compelling introduction; for example:
An effective introduction to your team’s marketing platform should be visually-driven. Be sure to include photos of you interacting with both fans and media members, as this illustrates your savineness in engaging with various audience types (ie, what your sponsors want to see!).
The section about your audience should outline what digital platform(s) you are active on, and the fanbase you reach and engage with through those platforms. For consumer brands, social media is an essential channel they will want to know about.
Having numbers to quantify your current audience is good. Showing audience growth, year-over-year, is a great way to pique additional interest from a prospective sponsor; has your average post engagement rate increased over time? And, what new platforms or content formats have you pursued to build a larger or more engaged audience? This takes us to our next section…
Sponsors want to connect with customers. Those customers might be fans, or they could also be business decision makers or even other racers. As a racer or race team with a marketing platform, your sponsorship capabilities (aka, “assets”) refer to how you reach these target audiences, both during race weekends and on-going through your social media.
For capabilities, look beyond simple logo placements. For instance, consider:
TIP: consider presenting your sponsorship capabilities as a “menu,” rather than a rigid three-tiered list. Detailing each of your sponsorship capabilities individually helps your partner pick and choose which elements of a larger partnership would be most beneficial to them. If you pre-build “packages” before even understanding their goals, you’re essentially “boxing” your sponsor in with limited choices.
Also, your marketing deck should not touch on pricing; save that for the negotiations and proposal, which we’ll cover in a future blog. This works because, depending on the scope of a partnership your sponsor is after, there’s wiggle room for discussion around your sponsor's expectations come activation of the sponsorship.
If you have been featured in past media coverage – whether it be an interview for your series or a feature for a larger publication, these are absolutely elements to include in your marketing deck. Link out to the videos or articles directly, so your prospective sponsor can see what media activity you’ve taken part in – if they sponsor you, this is something they’ll absolutely want inclusion on.
Having a slide dedicated to previous sponsor features, like social media posts or at-track activations, is tremendously valuable social media proof. If you have previous sponsor activities, you should absolutely document these in your marketing deck, to help illustrate exactly how you can bring your sponsorship capabilities to life.
Sponsors love great stories. If you communicate exactly how you helped a previous sponsor achieve their business objectives, it goes a long way to showcasing your business-savviness as a racer.
Sponsorship case studies can follow a very basic format: 1) challenge, 2) solution, and 3) results. The challenge is what your sponsor was looking to achieve; who did they want to reach, and what was their message? The solution is how you created a tailored sponsorship plan to help them achieve their objectives. The results – which will most likely come from your sponsor – are what you helped them achieve, and the quantifiable results of their sponsorship with you.
There is absolutely a formula to creating an impactful marketing deck. To secure the buy-in of prospective sponsors, you need a dialed-in business case and sponsorship strategy. The marketing deck should lead into a greater conversation, around the “how” of helping your sponsors achieve their goals – thus, creating longer-term relationships that help you fund your career or team!
Did you know? We can help you develop your own team’s unique marketing deck and content ahead of your sponsor search this upcoming off-season! Whether you need help with deck design, content writing or editing, our services are affordable and guarantee a quick turnaround!
If you want a marketing deck which stands out and gets to the heart of a business’s goals, now is a great time to get in touch with us!
