How to Sponsor a Cycling Team, Part 2: Merchandise your Support

[Sponsoring a cycling team often comes off as a labor of love, rather than a sound marketing investment. It doesn't have to. The good news for marketers is that there are many ways to increase their return without ramping up the resources attached to the sponsorship. This series will explore them, one at a time. And briefly - because marketers are busy people.]

How to Sponsor a Cycling Team
Part 2: Merchandise your Support

In Part 1, I made the point that logo soup NASCAR-style is worthless to sponsors. The reason it's not worthless to NASCAR sponsors is that the sponsorship doesn't end with the logo on the the side of the car, that racing sport's counterpart to our vaunted Kit. Smart sponsors know that the more they promote their involvement with NASCAR, the more they'll influence fans away from the racecourse as well. Take Home Depot, for example. The first thing you'll see near the front door at most stores is a big soda machine with the #20 car all over it. Next to the soda machine are bright orange carts with kids' seating in the front, stylized to look like the #20 car. Stroll through the store or website and you'll see a lot of #20 merchandise - from paint colors to keys to home decor, even pit-crew inspired toy tools for kids during the holidays. They know to remind their customers of their NASCAR involvement: if it's worth spending on in the first place, it's worth using their own media to tell as many people as possible about it, at little incremental cost.

For cycling sponsors, this means actively promoting your involvement with the sport or a team to your customers as well. If you're a restaurant, add a menu item named after the team or a local legend. Retail businesses should display anything from a photograph to a jersey to a full bike. Treat the racers like local celebrities and invite them to meet-and-greets with your customers, or to put on the occasional clinic. Sure, this will make the racers all blushy and proud but that's not the point. The more important you make them seem, the more your sponsorship is worth to your customers. You won't make them NASCAR-famous, but you can certainly impart to your customers that they're more dedicated to their sport than Uncle Joe is to his Tuesday Night Bowling League.

If you are a larger company, use your PR department and corporate website to promote your involvement. You may end up reaching other cyclists who don't know you're sponsoring their sport, and curry their favor in the process. It's not difficult to tie an investment of a few thousand dollars to an initiative to promote healthy living, fitness, or some specific qualities associated with your particular team.

The key here in all of this though is to extract whatever promotion you can from the team you're involved in, but don't count on them to promote your involvement. You should do that yourself, in the same way you would a promotion you were running, or a charitable cause you were supporting.

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See the complete series here.

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For more thoughts on marketing through bicycle racing, try the section entitled "What GamJams Believes" in the GamJams Media Kit, available for download as a PDF here.