Page 169 - 101 Ways to Market Your Business

101 WAYS TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS

73 Support a local team—a small cost for great
exposure

Every major sporting team around the world has at least
one giant corporation sponsoring them. Yet again, let’s
bring this down to a smaller, more affordable level and look
at sponsoring a local team.

When you get down to children’s teams, sponsorship
normally means providing the team with shirts and maybe
some sporting equipment. This is not an expensive exercise.
Think about the exposure your business will receive—first,
the team members and their immediate families and sup-
porters will look more favourably upon your business, then
members of the local community will perhaps read snippets
about your team in the newspaper or see them on the
television. Every time they play a game your business gets
the exposure.

Often sporting teams adopt the name of the major
sponsor and the same principle can be used for your
business sponsorship.

Another benefit of sponsorship like this is that you are
putting something back into the community where you live
and work and that is a good thing. All of this for a few
hundred dollars. To me that is a bargain.

An extension of this idea is signage at the grounds of
local sports parks. Approach any sporting venue and
enquire about signage. It can be inexpensive and as long
as you get a good sign-writer to make up the sign, the
effect can be very professional.

I observed an example of how this can work at a
recently opened go-kart track. This sport has a large world
following and international events can host thousands of
people. Signage was available at the local track for $200
per year. You would have to agree that this is a cheap form
of marketing, especially for international exposure.

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