FanPost

A Pitch for Local Business: Article Sponsorship


South Side Sox has been declared "unimportant" by national brand marketing professionals, as budget cuts have shown. National, global, and even local marketing rely on data that suggests diminishing clicks or views. Adblock technology also limits the visibility of advertisements that pay the professionals that write articles as well as other valuable contributors behind the scenes. This of course creates numerous problems for the business model as marketers seek greater visibility. Local sports blogs do have national audiences, but much readership remains local. While national brands and advertisements have little incentive to change marketing and advertising strategies, local businesses and brands can benefit tremendously from direct strategic sponsorship and support of local sports blogs.

It seems, however, that there is a gap in the market for what could be highly efficient and extremely inexpensive advertisement for local businesses. Currently listed on Patreon there is a tier that gives a sponsor the ability to appear in the end notes of articles. This is a nice way to receive recognition for any particular individual reader. But this is only a start. This has the potential to be invaluable for local businesses looking to expand their visibility.

A local business could sponsor specific articles, such as game threads or game coverage articles. The business' name could be bolded in the first line of the article or thread with a thank you and a one sentence description with a link. See the following example: "South Side Sox would like to thank (business name), a (business type) located in (location) for supporting Sox coverage here, please check out www.website.com and consider supporting them as well." Very simple, straightforward, and honest. It is not an endorsement, simply an invitation to consider a local business that values what the reader also values: great local baseball coverage. That shared value can create a spark of interest.

Advertising in the internet age is not about telling everything about your business in one ad, it is simply a conduit to building attention. It only serves to draw customers to your website or location. It only creates a spark. Potential customers, once interested, will have that spark of interest ignited by business websites and good reviews to engage with a business. A business providing a satisfactory experience will then get the single most important type of advertisement, word of mouth referrals and recommendations. This is because a business by sponsoring content has already built a small amount of goodwill with potential customer.

Article sponsorships could be purchased for a number of games per week (0-1, 1-2, 3-4) with sponsorship based on frequency for an entire season for game based articles. News and analysis articles could be sponsored on a tier basis for their predicted visibility and could be sponsored on a monthly basis (0-1 articles/week but ≥ 2/month and higher). By sponsoring articles directly, businesses build goodwill and visibility with potential customers.

Besides the two greatest value building aspects of establishing customer goodwill and increasing visibility, direct article sponsorship overcomes the greatest challenge facing internet advertising today. It is equally visible regardless of the usage of an adblocker. Thus, the business increase visibility with customers in their area in all circumstances.

Some may suggest advertising in this way would upset and alienate readers using an adblocker, however that counterargument is left wanting by the strategy used in implementing advertisements. Most adblockers are used to not prevent advertisement in an of itself, it is rather looking to remove "clickbait" fake articles and distracting obtrusive banners that detract from user experience. This, however, is not entirely warranted.

Unobtrusive recognition of sponsorship is not a gaudy banner distracting from content. The eye naturally sees the recognition at the beginning of the article and engages with the advertisement, decides if the product/business is of interest, and then continues onto content. Internet advertising, again, is all about drawing interest to the business location or website. It is best utilized when it allows the consumer to build his or her own interest level as information is consumed.

Article sponsorship at a local sports blog like South Side Sox is a highly visible, goodwill building, and unobjectionable way to generate interest in a local business where other methods of advertising may be prohibitively expensive or ineffective. Consider this rare opportunity to generate business by binding your business with a site like SSS, where readers are passionate in their support of their team, their community, and those that write the articles they love.

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I don't even know if sponsorship like I've presented is possible for the site. I had an idea for a type of article sponsorship which I wanted to post. Then I remembered you said you aren't a salesperson(people), and I understand that. Well I am a salesperson. So I wanted to build a sales pitch for you guys to potentially earn a few more dollars. Undoubtedly there are business owners and local business workers who are in the community. It is at least how I would present the value. You could obviously change things around as you see fit. I hope that maybe this helps.

SouthSideSox is a community-driven site. As such, users are able to express their thoughts and opinions in a FanPost, such as this one, which represents the views of this particular fan, but not necessarily the entire community or SouthSideSox editors.

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