Since I put up the new poker theme this weekend we have had a nice stream of new sponsors signing up for the poker tournament. First thank you to each of you! Logos will go up below Azoogle soon!

The Epiar logo shows up best with a white background. The correct background is everything.

Why would you want to sponsor something?

Honestly is someone going to see your companies name on a t-shirt or a sign and go, WOW! and go buy that thing? Absolutely not.

On the other hand, are you going to start a conversation with someone new, or cold call a new client and say, Hi this is Jim Boykin from Hot Fudge SEO, We Build Pages, we do SEO, and build websites,and have them cut you off and say, “Hey Jim! I know exactly who you are! I see your company all over the place! Yes, that happens all the time. (Jim’s giving us a ton of dough this year!, but that is not why I am linking to him or talking about him!)

The Purpose Inc blog and events have gotten well known enough now, that I can say, hey this is dk from Purpose Inc, and people now say, “yah, the poker guy” or “oh yah, the beach party guy”, or even, “Oh yes, Shoemoney’s brother!” no joke.

This does not get people to sign up for clients, does not get them to come to my events, and it does not get them to sponsor my stuff, but it does open the door. It gets their attention, so the conversation can begin. Being a sponsor also says, our company is established enough, or at least funded enough to throw a little money around to help the group. The attendees to my events at least are very sophisticated and sit at my events, (like I do at others), making up balance sheets in their head to figure out how much this cost, or that cost, how much I brought in, did I make a profit or lose money. Neil Patel is shockingly good at this, and will tell you how much this or that event makes even if not one ever told him the inside data. (Neil bought me In and Out burger and some crappy Chinese Food once, plus his mom has fed me many times.)

What this means is that the attendees, at least of my events, know how much all this stuff costs. They appreciate the open bars, hot girls, or cool t-shirts and realize someone had to pay for them. They really appreciate the sponsors who step up for the events they love, and that will get you some favors when they are needed.

This only works if they love the event. If the event sucks, then being a sponsor of it will be noticed. Quite painfully you may be thought of as a sucker for sponsoring such a crummy event. Crummy events cost as much or more to put on than the good ones. If the person who puts on the event does not have their finger on the pulse of the attendees, they can drop a lot of dough on making something nobody likes.

So first off, make sure the event is cool, and that the attendees like them!

This is tough for new events. I have been discussing different ideas for a new event in the spring. Is it going to be a success? Well, so far my events have been big successes, but I know it will be a harder sell for sponsors for a new event. People in the industry already know my Pubcon Poker event and the thinktank are going to rock, so getting sponsors is relatively easy. Getting sponsors for the new event (if I have it) will be significantly harder.

So you’ve signed up! You’re a sponsor now! How do you get the best image? First off, comunicate with the person holding the event. and communicate early on. If you communicate to me early on, a month before the event, I have plenty of time to talk, and figure out the best game plan. If you try to discuss some aspect of the sponsorship with the person running an event during the week before or the day of the event, they will likely be right close to the point of being overwhelmed, and won’t have time to really handle your request properly.

Here are the things you should give the head of the event, and any other PR people long before the event begins.

1. The Money! This lets them know you are in for sure, and will make sure early planning includes your companies placement on any promotional materials, and space on the blog. When I did my blog redesign this weekend, I literally made out a list of who was going to sponsor, and arranged the space to allow for them.

2. Give them your logo as a nice big jpeg. Send them a jpeg much bigger than anyone could ever use. A jpeg is quick to work with, and can easily be made smaller. A small jpeg if you try to make it bigger will look pixalated and like 1995.

3. Give them your logo in an Adobe Illustrator compatable file. These are usually a .eps format. This means that the parts are seperate from each other. This allows the graphics person, usually me, to remove the background, change colors of different parts if necessary, or change the look. For example last year, when Epiar sponsored the poker tournament, Indeed to put their logo in a log of places. It is very cool, but the majority of it is grey. It is a cool logo, but it looks best in front of white. As a result of this when I went to put it on a black t-shirt, or on a photo which often has lots of greys in the background it would disappear. Luckily they had given it to me in an Illustrator format so I could modify it slightly so it would show up on a black shirt, or a grey photo background.

4. Let the person throwing the event know about your company. I love blogging about those who help me, whether they give me money or not, but especially when they give me money. I am so busy, to really understand your company it might take me hours of study. Even after that I could get it totally wrong. Make my job easy promoting you, let me know what your company does nice and simply. Ideally send me the one sentence version of what your company does. Send me a sentence of what you are trying to promote now. Send me links of pages you are trying to promote so it is easy for me to find the info, and put links to them. Even if I put no-follow links, the value of interested users going there is going to probably exceed any SEO value you would have gotten.

5. Ask what else you can do as part of the event to promote your product. I usually assume once you have kicked in your dough that you have tapped out what you can spend. There are often additional opportunities for you to make your product known, that I had not thought of before, but might require work and a small amount of money on your part. Examples of this is when Ruben of tweetfind sponsored this year he then emailed me and asked if he could bring a few tweetfind t-shirts to the event. I said of course. It doesn’t cost us anything, doesn’t really dilute the message of the other sponsors, since he is not going to be handing them out to everyone, but instead will sit there for those interested, and benefits tweetfind. Other options are putting custom sponsor outfits on the girls I will have there. It honestly doesn’t cost that much money for the outfits with the sponsors name on them, but takes a lot of time, is unpredictable whether the outfit will fit the particular model well, and there could even be a change in models at the last moment. So the clothing thing is cool, but requires a lot of time and unpredictability. I love sponsors who are willing to go through with it, because it looks cool in pictures, and makes the sponsor look cool.