This topic seems to rotate through every other year or so!! Usually because we get new people who want to open a haunt, they see some hanuts with sponsors and assume they can get sponsors to pay enough money to open their haunt!!! Simple answer is NO WAY!!!
Sponsors are very usuful and you can get them, the best way is to always put yourself in the shoes of the sponsor. What would YOU do if you owned the business and the haunt owner came to you with the same deal????
BEST way to deal with sponsors is to get "in kind" donations. That is you are getting a value, but not necessarily money. But thing of it this way, if you get goods or services that you need, that frees up your capital to spend on other things!!!
Remember this, an advertiser works on impressions, how many times his name or message is being seen versus the cost.
Say you get a TV ad that costs $1,000 but it is seen by 300,000 people your impression is only about 1/3 of a penny per impression.
If you want to charge $1,000 for a sponsorship to put a banner on site and you get 10,000 patrons.... your impression is .10 each.
So the trick is to find ways to increase the impression rate.
One of the easiest ways to deal with sponsors is to trade for services. Say you need a generator and the rent would be $500 for the month. Approach the sponsor with trading the use of the generator for $500 in tickets! Explain that he can use them for his employees and give them to his customers!! Now you get the generator you need and save $500 you can use for something else. Good part is that while you gave a value of $500 in tickets, chances are you will only see a percentage of the tickets returned. QUICK NOTE: always put a date requirement on your free tickets, push them for use the firts couple weeks you are open and NEVER Halloween weekend!
I also focus and using sponsor in my advertising program. I list them on all my coupons, web site and all my radio spots. My radio spots tell people to go to the various sponsors to get their discount coupons. In exchange they must also list me on their advertising, tagging me on their advertising. Using this program I have several TV commercials and radio commercials ALL reminding people to visit MY haunt!!! I end up with over $280,000 worth of advertising for a small per person percentage which averages out costing me 3% of what I get!!!
The trick is that the Haunt becomes the reason for the sponsors to get their name out during this slack retail period before the big Christmas season.
You HAVE to go to the sponsor during October to get the discount to the Haunt. Our radio sponsor uses us as a tool to get other sponsors on board which increases your value!! Again, this frees up cash to use for props or other COOL stuff.
Sponsors are very usuful and you can get them, the best way is to always put yourself in the shoes of the sponsor. What would YOU do if you owned the business and the haunt owner came to you with the same deal????
BEST way to deal with sponsors is to get "in kind" donations. That is you are getting a value, but not necessarily money. But thing of it this way, if you get goods or services that you need, that frees up your capital to spend on other things!!!
Remember this, an advertiser works on impressions, how many times his name or message is being seen versus the cost.
Say you get a TV ad that costs $1,000 but it is seen by 300,000 people your impression is only about 1/3 of a penny per impression.
If you want to charge $1,000 for a sponsorship to put a banner on site and you get 10,000 patrons.... your impression is .10 each.
So the trick is to find ways to increase the impression rate.
One of the easiest ways to deal with sponsors is to trade for services. Say you need a generator and the rent would be $500 for the month. Approach the sponsor with trading the use of the generator for $500 in tickets! Explain that he can use them for his employees and give them to his customers!! Now you get the generator you need and save $500 you can use for something else. Good part is that while you gave a value of $500 in tickets, chances are you will only see a percentage of the tickets returned. QUICK NOTE: always put a date requirement on your free tickets, push them for use the firts couple weeks you are open and NEVER Halloween weekend!
I also focus and using sponsor in my advertising program. I list them on all my coupons, web site and all my radio spots. My radio spots tell people to go to the various sponsors to get their discount coupons. In exchange they must also list me on their advertising, tagging me on their advertising. Using this program I have several TV commercials and radio commercials ALL reminding people to visit MY haunt!!! I end up with over $280,000 worth of advertising for a small per person percentage which averages out costing me 3% of what I get!!!
The trick is that the Haunt becomes the reason for the sponsors to get their name out during this slack retail period before the big Christmas season.
You HAVE to go to the sponsor during October to get the discount to the Haunt. Our radio sponsor uses us as a tool to get other sponsors on board which increases your value!! Again, this frees up cash to use for props or other COOL stuff.
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