Where to get racing sponsorship

At this point, you would have done your research, an you know the business as well as anyone else who is already working there. The key here is to get in touch with the main decision makers within the business. Normally the CEO is best as they can override the decisions made by the marketing directors. If you go the marketing director route, you will still need to convince the CEO to sponsor you.

The key to networking is to make contact a personal touch. Do not barge your way in and immediately start selling your racing and demand money from them.

Everyone loves to talk about themselves, and psychologically it makes them like you more. A good way to do so is to use social media. The best one to use in this case is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is an amazing tool to meet people in a more professional manner than the usual social media.

You are able to search for people based on their jobs, companies and locations. Once you are connected try to talk to them about something unrelated to motorsport. This might seem unproductive, but it works. If you immediately message them about your racing you could easily just be blocked or ignored. Start off by talking about them , or something their company has done recently.

Most people will ignore messages if you start talking about something unrelated to them or something, they have no interest in. The important part is to get people to start talking about themselves and what they do. Once you have got them chatting and are starting to get to know one another, you can gently guide the conversation towards cars, motorsport or yourself.

People are much more likely to sponsor you if they feel like they know you. So, start to build a relationship first, and then sell your brand once the opportunity comes along. This takes time and patience, if you rush this process, you could close that door and burn the bridge on your way out.

This is something that every single driver struggles with. You need to find ways that you can provide value to your potential sponsors. If they are going to be spending money on you, you need to give the same value back to them in benefits. Sponsorship should be an exchange, not a charity. There are a number of ways that you can do that, but you will need to get creative and think outside the box. You need to go past offering corporate hospitality packages.

What you can do here is to say to the company that you can offer 4 VIP tickets to a race weekend, plus a driving experience in your race car. The company can then use that as an element to motivate their staff to sell more cars.

The salesperson that sells the most cars in February wins 4 VIP tickets to the race weekend for example. Now you are using something you can offer and directly linking it with the goals of the business and helping them to achieve that. It might sound simple, but sometimes you really need to spell it out for people and make it easy for them to understand. The key to providing top value to your sponsors is to link it directly to their goals and what they want to achieve. You need to do this in a more creative way though in order to make your offer more appealing to them.

A good way to do so is think of every possible thing that you can do as a racing driver that has a racecar to use for various events. Grab a pen and a paper and write down every single idea that comes to mind, no matter how ridiculous you might think it is. There are no stupid ideas remember: Red Bull did a pit stop in zero gravity! If you are able to develop your idea and justify why it will work for the company , then you have added a benefit to your offer that can add more value to your sponsorship.

The key is to get creative, think outside the box and do something different to what everyone else is doing. Keeping sponsors on for multiple seasons is the end goal. Of course, you would want to keep your sponsors on for your entire racing career because it saves you from constantly having to go and find new sponsors every single year. You need to put your sponsors first. Many drivers promise a good looking racecar filled with the logos of sponsoring companies, and the benefit that sponsors get from that is extra social media content.

But most sponsors end up having to do extra work in order to get that social media content. Putting your sponsors first means that you go out of your way to literally create their social media content for them and all they need to do is post it.

Find some of your favorite photos from the race weekend and transform then in social media ready posts. Do you have a very popular online presence? I spent some time working for a good friend in his race shop. People regularly contact him asking for free parts in exchange for running a couple stickers.

Though my experience was generally limited, I never saw ANY return from any of it. Social media is king. One of the first things a prospective sponsor will do is check out your social media accounts. Is your account popular… How many Thousands of followers do you have? Are you posting regularly? Do your posts get engagement? There are plenty of great articles, podcasts, and books directly pertaining to creating a good sponsorship proposal.

If you are a driver seriously seeking sponsorship, take the time to read some of these so you can come out of the gate strong. Create a portfolio, be presentable and professional. Expect to promise a specific number of race appearances, shows, online presence, blog posts, etc. You need to show up to a potential sponsor with a persuasive, well thought out plan. In short, have a solid plan a sponsorship proposal for how you will BOTH benefit from any sort of partnership.

All you usually need to do is run their stickers and if you finish a race in certain positions usually around the top 5 cars you get some sort of prize. It will not offset all your costs for an entire weekend, but they can go a long way to lowering your expenses. Click the link below to read more. Through my time running Time Trial and Racing contingency prizes have long way to cutting my running costs.

If you are currently racing, or are considering it… Make sure you are getting the most out of your possible contingency sponsors, there are a lot of people who drop the ball on claiming contingency prizes.

Also, make sure you treat these sponsors right to keep them on board with sponsorship: Run their products and post your appreciation when you win. To maintain and enhance! It is for this reason, and the fact that we receive many sponsorship requests, that we require you to present a formal written proposal including a completed Sponsorship Application form in order to receive Racetech sponsorship.

Each completed sponsorship proposal will receive proper consideration but there is no guarantee that your application will be successful. Proposals must include:. Replacement products will only be provided in the unlikely event of a manufacturer defect.

Replacement requests for worn-out products, products that fail due to operator negligence, or for theft will not be honoured. Racetech retains detailed documentation as evidence to support all sponsorships. We require credit card information including the name of the person or company being sponsored.

In the event that Racetech does not receive adequate documentation, as detailed above, within the specified time frame i.