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Hey O welcome to the 100, welcome to all RMBA show business simplified every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my partner back in 2014. Today's episode is a Q and A episode on our Q and A episodes. I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. We usually have this on Wednesdays and we call it Q and A Wednesdays. But we're shaking things up this week and making it Q and A Monday. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omar00mba.net Today's question is from Will and Will asks, hey Omar, Love the podcast. Quick question about sponsoring online events. I get approached at least once a week to sponsor some online summit conference or event. While the sponsorship packages are more affordable than in person conferences, I wonder how worth it is it to actually invest into this opportunity. Any experience in sponsoring online events would love your advice. Thanks Will. Great question Will. I have sponsored several online events and I'll give you my advice on how to get the best deal and what's really important when it comes to being a sponsor. And of course I'll share with you if it's worth it. If I get an ROI by sponsoring these events because not all sponsorship packages are created equal. Let's find out why and how to do this right. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

We've all been there. You hold onto a coupon but forget about it and suddenly it's expired.

Expired in 2012. Dang it.

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In a lot of ways. Sponsoring an online event can be a lot more profitable for your business than an in person. Eventually. Many in person events, even once everything gets back to normal after Covid, are expensive. I've sponsored in person events for 10, 20, $30,000. So in order for me to get a return on investment, I kind of make more than that. Plus the expenses that I have to spend there, getting there, any teammates that are going to go there to be at the booth, the merchandise or the swag ring giveaway, it all adds up. And if you're a small business, every dime counts. So when we move to online events and we sponsor one of the, you can get a whole lot more affordable. I have sponsored online events for as little as $500 and sponsored some that are up to $5,000. At the end of the day, the biggest factor that's going to dictate your negotiating power and price is how many people will attend this event. I sponsored events that had 200 people and I've sponsored events that had 10,000 people that are going to show up online. Now if I have access to 10,000 people, that's great, but what kind of access? So what I want to start with is say that everything is a negotiation. They might have some packages for you to look at, but you can negotiate anything, especially when it comes to sponsorships. The event organizers are just looking for great sponsors that are a good fit with their audience and are willing to give them money so you can actually create your own package if the packages that you see are not really what you want. I have gone back and forth and created my own customized packages all the time because I, I really want access to that audience as much as possible. So here are a few things that I ask for when I sponsor any online event. Number one, I want a solo email to everybody that is registered, at least one. If I can get more than one, like before the event and after event, that's even better. A solo Email is an email that the event organizers will send to everybody registered promoting my business, my product. I'm in all these people's inbox. This is huge. Next. I also try as much as possible to see if I can get a speaker spot at the event. If I'm going to sponsor your event, I want to be a part of the event. I want to make sure that I can build rapport with the audience members and build that trust and likability. Sometimes I'm a part of events as a speaker and I'm not a sponsor and that alone can help drive traffic to my site and generate sales. But if you combine that with sponsorship, you're everywhere on that event and it really resonates when you can deliver on your speaker spot and really make your mark at the event. Next, logos and links. You want to make sure your business logo is on the event website and it links out to your website. It's not just a logo with no link. It needs to be a prominent place so people can see who are the sponsors. And I always like to include, can I have a little description under my logo so people know what this is all about. What else do I ask for? Well, I ask for a shout out in the beginning of any keynote speech, any main headliner speech. If they were bringing an expert from Apple or Google and everybody's going to be attending that speech, I want a shout out that started that speech. Something like, hey, today's event is sponsored by webinar Ninja. Check them out over@webinarninja.com and use Coupon code so and so to get this discount. For example, you know, I want to be mentioned when all people are watching and listening and they have their full attention. I want to make sure that I'm top of mind. This takes literally seconds and it's very, very easy for the organizers to do so. Most of the time when I ask it, they say, sure, they never plan to do that with any other sponsor, but they do it just for me because I asked. Now, I also recommend, no matter what you do, use some trackable links or what we call in the industry UTM links. If you don't know what UTM links are, just Google it. You'll understand how you can create UTM links that way when you link to your website on the events page or anywhere on the event, you can track that you actually got customers via this link via this event, so you can actually track roi. This is really important so that you can know if this is worth doing again in the future. Also, providing a coupon code for a discount or some sort of bonus can also allow you to track sales via the code. And it also makes it more appealing for them to sign up. It could be something simple as like extend your free trial to 30 days. If you use this code by having an identifier, you can then say, okay, I sponsored this event for $3,000, and via this event I got 10 customers and each customer's lifetime value is $500. That means I made $5,000 in revenue. I'm profitable. Let's run this play again next year. And every online event actually that I sponsored. When I do the math, it's always a profitable exchange. Mostly because online events are a lot more inexpensive than in person events. Now, I can't say the same about in person events. I would say more than half of the in person events that we sponsored we weren't profitable. So my advice is give it a shot. Try one event that's a really good event for your product, meaning that the audience is a perfect fit for your product or service. Make a budget to sponsor that event that is within your budget that you are happy to part ways with. If you lost all that money, it wouldn't kill your business. Of course you want to roi, but it's always good to experiment with that amount of money that is not going to break the bank. So for you, if that's $500, $1,000, whatever it is, that's okay. You can approach the event and say, hey, I have $1,000 in my budget to spend on sponsoring this event. Can you give me XYZ for this much? And they'll either say, yes, no, or you can have this, you can have that. This is what we can do for that kind of money. And you can go back and forth. Everything is a negotiation.

We've all been there. You hold onto a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store, but then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.

Do you think this one's still good? Free milk.

Oh, mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico. You could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

Ooh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.

I have one more tip I want to share with all you listeners and of course, all who asked today's question. When it comes to sponsoring events. If you find an online event that does give you an roi, it's actually quite helpful for you to be the sponsor of that event year in and year out. The consistency actually makes a big difference because often people that like the event will become an attendee of that event year after year. And if they see your brand name over and over, all of a sudden they start thinking that you're bigger than you are. They think that, wow, this company, I see it everywhere. But really, they just see it at this event every year. And you might notice this when you go to conferences or you see online events, that you'll see the same sponsors. And it's for that reason repetition really does matter when it comes to advertising, when it comes to marketing. That wraps up today's Q and A episode. Thanks, Will, for asking that question. If you have a question you want to ask, just go ahead and email me over@omar mba.net if you're new to the show, make sure you hit subscribe on whatever podcast app you use. Subscribing is absolutely free and it allows you to have access to over 1700 episodes in our archives. Go ahead and do that on whatever you use to listen to podcasts. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One ninja tactic that I like to do is I ask the event organizers, hey, in my solo email, if you're going to send me a solo email, instead of just promoting my product or promoting my offer, I want you to promote a free webinar that I'll be doing maybe a few weeks after the event. Why do I want to do this? I want them to move to my email address. So even if not everybody that gets an email registers, even if 15 or 20% register, that could be thousands of new emails on my marketing list. And for me, that's well worth it alone, because to get those thousands of emails via paid ads, it would cost me a fortune. So find a way to be a sponsor, but get those attendees to move over to your email list. And one of the easiest ways to do that is just to run a live webinar and have the event organizer promote that webinar in your solo email. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. Until then, take care.

We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon, but forget about it and suddenly it's Expired.

Expired in 2012. Dang it.

Fortunately, by switching to Geico, you could save about 900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

It feels good to save Big. It feels good to Geico.